Extendable Board Game to Facilitate Learning in Supply Chain Management

Abstract

Game-based learning has been introduced as an interactive tool to facilitate learning and training processes in various fields, including supply chain management (SCM). Most of these games are specifically designed to focus on certain scenarios and concepts. For example, the original beer distribution game focuses on a single product supply chain without considering capacity and process reliability into account. This creates challenges for extending the games to cover other concepts in SCM. To tackle this problem, we propose a board game, titled ThinkLog, as a face-to-face extendable framework to facilitate learning in SCM. It can be extended to generate different scenarios for various concepts in SCM without changing the basic game structure. Using this principle, we have extended the basic version of ThinkLog to two other scenarios, namely: humanitarian logistics and urban logistics, by simply modifying the rule of the game. Each scenario would have different learning objectives embedded in the gameplay. The game is also complemented with a computer-based application (digital application) to enhance the overall learning experience and collect relevant data (data gathering) during a game session. These three scenarios have been evaluated on four-interactive sessions with government officials and policy-makers in Indonesia. Each session has been consistent in its acceptance of the game as a tool to facilitate learning in SCM, regardless of the scenarios that we played. Our learning objective evaluation also shows that the game is effective in deepening the players' understanding of SCM concepts.

Re-organise: Game-Based Learning of Circular Business Model Innovation

“…Fraccascia et al (2021) show that digital games are suitable for teaching business dynamics of circular practices but are limited in direct communication. Board games have not yet been studied as extensively as digital games, but they are considered suitable for collaborative games due to their transparency and immediate interactive nature (William et al, 2018). Serious games are explicitly suitable for solving complex problems in collaborative settings (Geurts et al, 2007).…”

Teaching humanitarian logistics with the Disaster Response Game

“…In addition to face‐to‐face exercises, humanitarian logistics training includes board games and computer games. Board games can use cards to determine demands that need to be fulfilled at each round in the game (William et al., 2018), and computer games can simulate a variety of situations. For example, de Souza et al (2018) created a single player game for prepositioning stocks of life‐saving goods in Indonesia.…”

Effectiveness of Supply Chain Games in Problem-Based Learning Environment

“…In addition to those games, there are several games that introduce specific SCM concepts. Examples of those games are THINKLog (Lindawati, Nugroho, Fredericco, Rahim, & de Souza, 2017;William, Rahim, Souza, Nugroho, & Fredericco, 2018), Online Humanitarian Supply Chain (The Logistics Institute -Asia Pacific, 2017a, 2017b), Disaster Relief game (de Souza et al, 2018;The Logistics Institute -Asia Pacific, 2017a, 2017bWilliam, Rahim, Boo, & Souza, 2018), LogisticsRush (The Logistics Institute -Asia Pacific, 2017a, 2017b) and ACE E-Commerce game (Lindawati, Rahim, & de Souza, 2018). THINKLog is an extendable board game that can generate different scenarios for various concepts in SCM without changing the basic game structure , while the Online Humanitarian Supply Chain and Disaster Relief game (The Logistics Institute -Asia Pacific, 2017a, 2017b) are digital games focusing on humanitarian logistics which aims to plan and design a coordinated and uninterrupted supply chain of life-saving relief goods to the disaster-affected areas.…”