Results of a Beer Game Experiment: Should a Manager Always Behave According to the Book?

Abstract

We investigate the effect of the literature suggested optimal values of the parameters of a dynamic decision-making heuristic in the presence of semirationally managed supply chain echelons using a soft coded one-to-one version of The Beer Game as an experimental platform. According to the counterintuitive results obtained in this study, it is possible for a rational manager to obtain higher costs than the costs generated by a semirational manager. Thus, the results do not support the use of the well-established decision parameter values for the echelon of concern if the other echelons' inventories are managed suboptimally. (C) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.