A flexible web-based simulation game for production and logistics management courses Yung-Chia Chang, Wen-Chih Chen, Yung-Nien Yang, Hui-Cheng Chao * Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, National Chiao Tung University, 1001 University Road, Hsinchu 300, Taiwan article info Article history: Received 17 July 2008 Received in revised form 9 February 2009 Accepted 22 April 2009 Available online 6 May 2009 Keywords: Simulation games Production management Logistics management Supply chain management Teaching strategies abstract This study develops a flexible simulation game environment called SIMPLE (Simulation of Production and Logistics Environment) in order to raise teaching effectiveness and improve classroom teaching in emerging production paradigms. Instructors can tailor SIMPLE by simply setting the appropriate parameters. SIMPLE can thus be adopted at various teaching stages to teach different major business concepts, such as inventory management, capacity management, pricing determination and negotiation, and information-sharing between players. Meanwhile, SIMPLE was employed in two courses to evaluate the degree of stu- dents’ acceptance of using SIMPLE in classrooms. The results also showed that SIMPLE was generally well received by students. Ó 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Instructors of decision sciences courses such as production management, logistics management, and supply chain man- agement often are confronted with the challenge of continuously developing and adopting novel teaching methods to help students prepare for their professional careers. Additionally, instructors also are facing the challenge of motivating students with real-life scenarios in which several subjects are integrated within one study discipline. For example, determining the production quantities over time for a factory may involve at least the decisions of demand forecasting, resource allocation, machine scheduling, and inventory policy determination. Moreover, most universities are under sustained pressure to de- crease instructional costs, even when most enterprises in industry prefer to recruit people who have multi-functional abil- ities in order to increase their market competitiveness. To improve teaching effectiveness in these emerging production paradigms, new teaching aids are being proposed to help students gain a new understanding of real industries and enable them to employ the knowledge and theories that are ob- tained from classrooms in the real world. These teaching aids include gaming tools, which not only foster competition among students, but also bring excitement to the learning process. Instructors have successfully applied different games in class in recent years while teaching production management and other similar courses [21,17,1]. Additionally, games have been re- vealed to be very useful pedagogical methods for supplementing conventional teaching techniques. Regarding the different roles of instructors and students when the game is adopted, some production management and other related course games are designed for the needs of a single course or certain teaching topic [9,11,15]. Therefore, when instructors use games to assist in teaching, they require different games based on the needs of the course [24]; students must learn the rules and determine the strategy of different games for different courses. The demand that is placed on preparation 1569-190X/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.simpat.2009.04.009 * Corresponding author. E-mail address: flyfox1970@yahoo.com.tw (H.-C. Chao). Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 17 (2009) 1241–1253 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/simpat