SIMULATION OF BULLWHIP EFFECT IN A SUPPLY CHAIN FOR LEAN LEARNING FACTORY PURPOSES

A mission of the Learning Factory (LF) is a development of practice-based engineering curriculum through the simulation of a real factory by specialized equipment. In this paper, supply chain network simulator is developed, as a replacement for the traditional board Beer Game. The board Beer Game could be misused by participants in order to avoid significant bullwhip effect, which occurrence is the Beer Game main aim. The disadvantage of the board Beer Game, that participants have insight in inventory levels and placed orders and thus strategically act upon their knowledge or even activate a sort of decentralized information sharing policy, is avoided. Further considerations prove the mandatory occurrence of bullwhip effect without decentralized information sharing policy on three case studies. Optimal mathematical model for placing orders within a supply chain was defined according to multi-criteria optimization process using spreadsheet simulation. As even optimal model results with the bullwhip effect, newly developed system will always lead to the tremendous bullwhip effect during the learning process.