Turn logistics into a fun and educational game

Anyone who recently attended the Innovation & Experience (INEX) event we organised cannot have missed it: serious gaming is hot. A large part of the programme consisted of playing a supply chain game we developed, in which participants had to try to fulfil as many production orders as possible using raw material and transport cards. The year before, too, a board game was played during INEX. Then the challenge was to organise transport flows and determine the optimal trade-off between lead time, costs and CO2 emissions. We received very enthusiastic reactions from participants to both games.

Other perspectives

In my view there are several reasons why playing these games is so much fun. People with a logistics role recognise themselves in them and learn new tactics for achieving certain goals. But they enjoy it at least as much that other people, non-logisticians, also get to experience what makes their profession so complicated. Salespeople who play the beer game learn to understand why you cannot have everything in stock. Buyers see that ordering too much can lead to an enormous bullwhip. A game shows that there are different perspectives from which to look at something. And it teaches how you achieve a better result through different behaviour or different decisions.

With your children

Besides using serious gaming to raise the collective knowledge level of your organisation, you can also use it to show outsiders what kind of company you are. I once developed a board game for a printing company in which we showed in an accessible way how to determine optimal batch sizes for production lines. The company used this game to introduce business relations or new employees to the logistics dynamics of a printing company. What we also saw was that employees took the game home to let their families experience what kind of work they did. That is also the reason why we gave visitors the supply chain game from our INEX event to take home afterwards as a card game. So they could play it once more at home with their children.

Types of games

If you are a manager or owner of a company and want to seize the opportunities of a logistics game, you have various options. If you want to increase the supply chain knowledge of your organisation, there are special digital games available for that, which have to be facilitated by experts. If it is not so much about knowledge but more about mindset and getting departments to understand each other better, you can opt for a somewhat simpler game such as the beer game mentioned or one of the games developed by UC Group. If you really want to have a specific game developed for your company, there are various companies that can help you with that.

Trade-offs make logistics fun

Whether you are in warehousing, port logistics or a production environment, my experience is that an exciting game can be made of any process. There are always goals you want to achieve, restrictions, competitors and tactics, which you can easily pour into a board or card game (a digital game is much more expensive to make). They do not have to be one hundred per cent realistic either, as long as the essence corresponds to reality. In our supply chain game, for example, you have to choose between saving up raw materials or orders. Having too many raw materials left over costs you money. Too many orders leads to lost sales. Our profession is full of such trade-offs, and that is exactly what makes logistics so much fun.

Serious gaming can bring a logistics company awareness, insight, mutual understanding, knowledge and above all a great deal of fun. At UC Group we are happy to help you make the right choices here.

* The beer game was developed in 1960 at MIT in the US.

Want to know more?

Eric Hoogendam is a senior logistics engineer with extensive experience in designing and optimising warehouse processes. He is also involved in the games company The Dutch Game Mill, which is run by his brother. If you would like to exchange ideas with Eric (and/or his brother) about how a logistics game can improve your company too, feel free to contact him at eric.hoogendam@ucgroup.nl, +31 6 27825344.