International Conference on e-Learning’14 111 Teaching Supply Chain Management with the Beer Distribution Game on Mobile Devices Bojan Cestnik, Tanja Urbančič Abstract: At the University of Nova Gorica we introduced game playing as a didactical approach for learning the role of information support in supply chain management. We implemented a well-known beer distribution game developed at MIT Sloan School of Management more than fifty years ago. The game is regularly used in the Business information systems course in the Engineering and Management study programme at University of Nova Gorica. The supporting computer program that enables the game to be played using mobile devices was developed by the course teacher. The game playing in this course has proved to be very efficient for learning the importance of relevant information flows for better decision making. Key words: Educational games, supply chain management, mobile devices, beer game, e- learning. INTRODUCTION In alignment with the European Commission's communication »Opening up Education« [11] and with the consecutive »Opening up Slovenia« [12] initiative, University of Nova Gorica encourages new IT based teaching methods to be used throughout all its schools and study programs and started activities to use and produce openly accessible educational resources in a more systematic way. The motivation is not just to follow the strategic guidelines, but in the first place to enhance the quality of teaching, contributing to better study results. Soft skills needed for problem solving and team work are very important for the employability of graduates as well as for general development of economy and society. Yet, in the curricula and educational practice in higher education this is often neglected and subordinated to other academic goals. At the University of Nova Gorica, we put strong emphasis on this educational objective. Prevailingly, we try to achieve it by including individual as well as team projects into curricula, whenever possible based on realistic and practically applicable cases. In addition to this, we have recently decided to introduce game playing as an exercise in which students practice their problem solving skills in situations, simulating reality. In the continuation we describe our implementation of a well-known beer distribution game on mobile devices and its pilot application in a Business Information Systems course at the School of Engineering and Management, University of Nova Gorica. It is an example of interactive group games in which students learn based on role playing. We present our experience and lessons learned and conclude with our plan for further work. RELATED WORK The beer distribution game was developed by at MIT Sloan School of Management in early 1960s as a result of Jay Forrester's work on system dynamics [5, 6]. The game was later recognized as a good demonstration of benefits of information sharing, supply chain management and e-Collaboration in the supply chain [9]. As such, it found its way into education [10, 16]. It also serves one of the objectives of the Business Information Systems course at the Engineering and Management study program, as it illustrates the importance of relevant information flows for better decision making. The basic idea of the beer game is to simulate ordering and shipping products in supply chains. There are four player roles in the game: brewery, distributor, wholesaler, and retailer. Together they constitute a supply chain that supplies beer in quantities that meet customer’s demand. The customer typically exhibits a relatively simple shopping