The Beer Game
A rite of passage for new Sloan MBA students provides lessons in systems thinking.
Thursday, August 29, 1:00 p.m.
It is a miserably muggy afternoon in Cambridge as the incoming class of the MIT Sloan School of Management—roughly 400 students from 41 countries—files into a second-floor ballroom at the Kendall Square Marriott. They are here to play the Beer Game, a Sloan orientation tradition. Unfortunately given the weather, the Beer Game does not involve drinking cool beverages.“There is no actual beer in the Beer Game,” says John Sterman, the Sloan professor who is overseeing the proceedings for the 25th consecutive year.
Rather, the Beer Game is a table game, developed in the late 1950s by digital computing pioneer and Sloan professor Jay Forrester, SM ’45. Played with pen, paper, printed plastic tablecloths, and poker chips, it simulates the supply chain of the beer industry. In so doing, it illuminates aspects of system dynamics, a signature mode of MIT thought: it illustrates the nonlinear complexities of supply chains and the way individuals are circumscribed by the systems in which they act.
All that will be explained in a class-wide debriefing Sterman will conduct after the game. For now, it’s game on, and as a writer for MIT News, I’ve been invited by Sterman to play this year. I go to one of the 47 tables where students are randomly seating themselves in teams of eight, introduce myself to my seven teammates (MBA candidates from India, Peru, and the United States), and listen to Sterman explain the rules.
Beer game simulates the reality of supply chain management. If you are interested in knowing more about supply chain management, feel free to contactus.
