Beer Game
A study in psychology more than anything, I thought. It was very difficult for a "control-freak" like myself to realize that I, essentially, had no control over outcomes. I found myself feeling very frustrated with my "assistant" when I realized that she/I had not kept track of what was owed to us (the distributor). We knew the backlog for our customer, but not from our supplier. We were lost from that point on. I was the one making the final decision for orders; but, I tried to play psychologist in determining trends: ie. did we control the production cycle, and reduce our backlog by ordering less beer, and trying to play "catch-up" with our backlog? Or, would we replenish more quickly if we ordered one big batch (of 100)? No rationale seemed to connect to outcomes (later found out about the bull-whip effect, which we experienced in spades!). For me, this was an ongoing frustrating attempt to discover a cause and effect from trends, which did not exist. However, was great fun and learning exercise! Anita