Beer Distribution Game - A Review

Identify the system’s constraint itself. Learning that the true constraint is often a lack of availability of a specific skill or piece of equipment is helpful in quickly identifying the constraint, and the manager is encouraged to continually ask “why” to diagnose the constraint.

     The brewing industry was once held to competition among many breweries in small geographic areas. That was almost a century ago. The U.S. brewing industry today is characterized by the dominance of three brewers, which I will talk about in this paper. There are many factors today that make the beer industry an oligopoly. Such factors include various advancements in technology (packaging, shipping and production), takeovers and mergers, economies of scale, barriers to entry, high concentration, and many other factors that I will cover in this paper. Over the course of the paper I will try to define an oligopoly, give a brief history of the brewing industry, and finally to show how the brewing industry today is an

2) (1 point) What kind of control is this control procedure – a preventive or detective control? Explain.

2B. To control a variable is to be able to control it, not change it, the independent variable.

As of June 2015, there are eight breweries in Huntsville, soon to be nine. This smallish southern city, population 180,000, has undergone a total transformation as far as its craft brewing industry is concerned. Like so many other American cities, beer has come into the vogue, but few if any can claim to have experienced such as a rapid, radical, city-defining seismic shift. In just five years, “old veteran” brewing presences have been established and a younger generation has come along to reap the rewards of a clientele that continues to refine its taste. It’s still very much a work in progress, but to compare the “before” and “after” statistics is shocking. Thanks to a timely repeal of some antiquated laws that held the brewing industry back-a home brewing ban, an ABV cap, a ban on large-format bottles-craft beer is now free to thrive.

In answering this question you are expected to use relevant theories, models and ideas from Unit 2 as well as the stipulated forms of control framework, and pay particular attention to assembling both a coherent and critical argument.

A constraint is anything that limits a system from achieving higher performance relative to its goal. Constraint management seeks to help managers at all levels of an organization. It ensures that they maintain proper focus on the factors that are most critical to overall success of system constraints. Constraint Management efforts can immediately resolve extremely negative effects from machine, labor, and process inefficiencies, and have the ability to fund an entire transition to lean through substantial increases in throughput.

A documentary film made in 2009, Beer wars features and describes the American beer industry distinguishing between the large and small breweries. The large breweries feature some main corporate companies like Coors Brewing Company, Anheuser-Busch, and Miller Brewing Company whereas the small breweries include craft beer producers like Moonshot 69, Stone Brewing Company, Dogfish Head Brewery, Yuengling, and others. The documentary shows how the beer market is controlled through advertising and lobbying, which is harmful for the competition in the market. There is a reason why the small companies are falling behind and the large corporates are controlling the market, which in turn makes it essentially oligopoly economy.

First, it illustrates a control system that is dominated by action and personnel controls, rather

The object of the game is to meet customer demand for cases of beer through the distribution side of a multi-stage supply chain with minimal expenditure on back orders and inventory. There are four stages, manufacturer, distributor, supplier, retailer, with a two-week communication gap of orders toward the upstream and a two week supply chain delay of product towards the downstream. There is a one-point cost for holding excess inventory and a one-point cost for any backlog (old backlog + orders - current inventory). In the board game version, players cannot see anything other than what is communicated to them through pieces of paper with numbers written on them, signifying orders or product. The retailer draws from a deck of cards for what

control theory as these are the major theories that assist in explaining the concepts of

The beer game is a simulation first developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management in the 1960s. This game was made in other to experiment how real organisations functions, where the consequences of every decisions play out as clearly as possible in the game as they would in a real organisation (Senge, 1990). Narayanan Arunachalam (2006) described the game as a popular classroom exercise for business schools conceived at MIT with the primary purpose of demonstrating industrial dynamics. The beer game is a “laboratory replica” of a real organisational setting, helps to highlight the possible disabilities and their causes of an organisation. The beer game however in this case was created

They establish controls in the early stages of a system that will ensure quality is controlled

The beer game is a simulation first developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management in the 1960s. This game was made in other to experiment how real organisations functions, where the consequences of every decisions play out as clearly as possible in the game as they would in a real organisation (Senge, 1990). Narayanan Arunachalam (2006) described the game as a popular classroom exercise for business schools conceived at MIT with the primary purpose of demonstrating industrial dynamics. The beer game is a “laboratory replica” of a real organisational setting, helps to highlight the possible disabilities and their causes of an organisation. The beer game however in this case was created

A good control system provides timely information to the manager which is very much useful for taking various decisions. Control simplifies supervision by pointing out the significant deviations from the standards of performance. It keeps the subordinates under check and brings discipline among them.