Majestic Wine, known for being the largest specialist wine retailer in the UK revealed that they have adopted a unique training process by using a supply chain simulation game. This training took place in order to ensure that the team are prepared for the day-to day challenges that are involved with delivering an extremely high level of customer service. The software for the simulation game has been supplied to the wine distribution company by Supply Chain in Essex.
The Beer Game, or beer distribution game has created originally in the 1960’s by Jay Forrester, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT. The game was first created by Jay as a way of working on his system dynamics. The game consists of competitive roleplay simulations that will allow the participants, in this case, the staff at Majestic Wine, to experience a range of potential problems that can occur in traditional supply chains, The game illustrates how important coordination is right across the supply chain.
Each of the Majestic Wine groups that took part in the simulation had control over a single area of the supply chain, although they could influence the entire chain by ordering too much or too little. Similar to real life supply chains, each area of the supply chain is influenced by the decisions made by another.
This innovative training technique is still educational while offering an alternative approach to training. The company have been working with the Supply Chain Academy in order to create a simulation that is bespoke to Majestic Wine which helped to educate their employees and show them what happens at each stage of the supply chain. The beer game simulation offers people experience in different functional areas, whether that is manufacturing, sales, marketing, finance, customer service, procurement, warehouse and distribution. A greater knowledge of these areas will allow the team at Majestic Wine to continue to deliver a high quality of service.
