Proceedings of the 2011 Winter Simulation Conference S. Jain, R.R. Creasey, J. Himmelspach, K.P. White, and M. Fu, eds. LEARNING BY GAMING: SUPPLY CHAIN APPLICATION Ayman Tobail John Crowe Amr Arisha Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) 3S Group, College of Business Aungier Street, Dublin 2, IRELAND ABSTRACT Today’s third level students are of a virtual generation, where online interactive multi-player games, vir- tual reality and simulations are a part of everyday life, making gaming and simulation a very important catalyst in the learning process. Teaching methods have to be more innovative to help students understand the complexity of decisions within dynamic supply chain environment. Interactive simulation games have the potential to be an efficient and enjoyable means of learning. A serious interactive business game, Au- tomobile Supply Chain Management Game (AUSUM), has been introduced in this paper. Using theories learnt in class as a knowledge base, participants have to develop effective supply chain partnership strate- gy to enhance their supply chain networks. Deploying the game over the web encourages student interac- tion and group work. Most importantly the game will enable students to fundamentally grasp the impact of strategic decisions on other parts and players of the supply chain network. 1 INTRODUCTION Ever since the introduction of a Simulation and Process Modeling module to the B.Sc. in supply chain management (SCM) at Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) in 2008, there has been very positive feed- back from students relating to how effective simulation modeling was in helping them get a better under- standing of the dynamic nature of supply chains. The central theme of this paper is to develop an interac- tive supply chain serious game that can aid in teaching and training various concepts in SCM. As a management philosophy, SCM is a vast concept, with many interpretations and definitions. Alt- hough the management concept itself was only introduced in early 1980 by Oliver and Webber, cited in Jüttner et al. (2007), it was not until the mid-1990’s that it came to prominence on a global basis. SCM can be defined as the strategic management of upstream (suppliers) and downstream (customers) relation- ships in order to create enhanced value to the final consumer at less cost to the supply chain as a whole (Christopher 1998). At its basic level a supply chain is made up of multiple actors, multiple flows of items, information and finances and is sometimes described as looking like an ‘uprooted tree’(Lambert and Pohlen 2001). Supply chains are very dynamic, each network node has its own customers’ and sup- pliers’ management strategies, partnerships, demand arrival process and demand forecast methods, inven- tory control policies and items mixture (Longo and Mirabelli 2008), with many challenges to overcome including: complexity, uncertainty, risk, visibility, collaboration, cost and sustainability to name a few. Most importantly, educating both SCM professionals and SCM students alike to fully understand the dy- namics of the supply chain can be difficult. Textbooks, case studies and the traditional class lecture alone are an adequate foundation in helping students understand the fundamental concepts of SCM, but fail in highlighting the bigger picture of the supply chain and the strategic decisions that need to be made. In this environment it is hard for students to see things from a manager’s perspective, where decisions made 3940 978-1-4577-2109-0/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE