Basic Problems of the Beer GameWe are familiar with the board of the original Beer Game that shows information flow on the upper side and logistics on the lower side (Figure 1a). While all the arrows are painted black, the board is designed with four colors for four positions: black for a retailer, blue for a wholesaler, green for a distributor, and red for a factory. However, Innovation Associates Ltd. designed the board by coloring these arrows differently: the color of the arrows at each position is the same as the color for each position (Figure 1b). Violet is used in the place of blue of the original game. Coloring the board greatly helps a player easily understand the role of his position and easily play the game. One problem is that the roles of the positions on these boards do not completely correspond to those in reality. For example, while a real retailer checks and receives incoming products, he does not transport them. He places orders, but dose not bring them to a real wholesaler. These activities are usually executed by a real wholesaler. The steps of the original Beer Game are the followings (Sterman):

Integrating the board, the steps and the record sheetsTo overcome these basic problems, a revised board, steps and record sheets need to be redesigned. In this revised board (Figure 2a), all the names of the upper boxes include "DELAY" because they are actually delays: order delays and the production request delay. Second, the number and short words of each step are shown close to an appropriate box for the step so that a player can notice and execute the step at once. Italic steps indicate that they are executed on a record sheet. Third, coloring clearly separates all the positions into four color areas including arrows. For example, the ﾒshipping delayﾓ box at the left of the bottom is divided into two parts by coloring black and blue because a wholesaler (Blue) advances goods into this box, while a retailer (Black) counts incomoing products in this box and recieves them into his inventory box. There are new twelve steps for each position (Figure 2b). A game leader calls out each step so participants know the main and specific roles of the four positions. As it is convenient for a player to have a specific record sheet of each position, four kinds of revised record sheets are prepared (Figure 2c). In the table of this record sheet, two columns are added to the original version: ﾒRecording incomoing productsﾓ and ﾒRecording the order.ﾓ Also, two columns of the original record sheet, ﾒInventoryﾓ and ﾒBacklogﾓ are unified into one column: ﾒCompute Inventory or Backlogﾓ while the other one is ﾒDecide & Record the order.ﾓ As a result, there are four columns in the table and these columns on the record sheet are in the order of the equation. The equation, which is explained using an example at the top of the record sheet (how to compute inventory or backlog), helps a player to become immediately familiar with computing inventory or backlog easily by following an operator inside a cell. At the end of the game, when a backlog is negative, the absolute value of each negative value of a backlog is added up for total costs. The other two columns, Date and Name, are added at the top of this record sheet. The Name column is also necessary on the graph sheet in order to utilize the graph at the debriefing stage. In this way, the board, the steps and the record sheets are integrated in this revised edition of the Beer Game by redesigning the equation and roles for each participant. * We had valuable suggestions from Shogo Sakakura, Takayuki Toyama and Koichi Yamauchi, who joined playing the Beer Game at the office of the Japanese Chapter of the System Dynamics Society on Dec. 21, 1996.