The Beer Game

At Sloan Lager Brewing Co., demand is booming. Customers are thirsty, the product is beloved, and the team is confident. But behind the scenes, the supply chain is far from stable. Small missteps ripple unpredictably from retailer to wholesaler to distributor to factory—creating shortages, backlogs, stockpiles, and frustration.

Participants step into one of these four roles—Retailer, Wholesaler, Distributor, or Factory—within a beer supply chain and must make weekly ordering decisions with limited information, strict communication boundaries, and rising time pressure.

No one can see end-customer demand except the retailer. No one can coordinate across roles. Every player is trying their best, but as the game unfolds, orders begin to spike, inventory swings wildly, and team chat fills with disbelief, blame, humor, and stress.

Weeks roll on. Trucks arrive late. Inventory turns negative. Warehouses overflow. People yell into the void: “Why are the factories producing so much?” “What is up with those retailers?!”

As the tension builds, participants begin forming theories about what must be happening at the customer end—most concluding there must be chaotic demand swings.

By the end, participants see clearly why complex systems routinely exhibit boom-and-bust cycles, massive amplification, finger-pointing, and costly coordination failures—insights they can immediately apply to real supply chain, organizational, and leadership challenges.