The game's afoot! New supply chain game teaches the importance of collaboration

The supply chain research firm Supply Chain Insights and the software company LLamasoft are releasing a simulation game that helps businesses teach their employees about market-driven supply chains.

Supply Chain Insights Impact! simulates the critical decisions made during a sales and operations planning (S&OP) process. The game is played in 45-minute rounds and is suitable for strategy workshops, internal team training sessions, or workshops of 10 to 60 individuals, according to Supply Chain Insights. Each round represents one month of supply chain planning.

The game is designed to pass on knowledge to people coming into the supply chain area from other business functions or to those entering the workforce for the first time. The training objectives can be achieved through between three and 10 rounds, according to the game developers.

"Businesses are struggling to effectively package up all the knowledge of current workforces to equip the talent that will shape the supply chain of tomorrow," said Lora Cecere, founder and CEO of Supply Chain Insights, in a statement. "This game is an effective, fun method for your teams to work together to understand the business impact of decisions made at different points in a complex supply chain."

The game demonstrates how collaboration and organizational alignment lead to better decision making across the supply chain, according to Jeff Metersky, vice president of Solution Strategy at LLamasoft. It also provides an understanding of the value of creating customer-focused processes and the impact of basing supply chain strategy on a balanced portfolio of metrics advocated by Supply Chain Insights, which includes market capitalization, price to tangible book value, growth, operating margin, inventory turns, and return on invested capital, he said.

Supply Chain Insights Impact! will debut in September at the 2017 Supply Chain Insights Global Summit.