Application Form
Teaching Fellowship Award Scheme 2009 - 2010
Signed forms to be returned to:
Margaret Powderley
EDaLT
4th Floor, Rolle Building
Plymouth Campus
Deadline: Monday 6th April 2009, 12pm (Please note that no applications
can be accepted after this time.)
Title of proposed project:
Developing a GUI Beer Game for Learning and
Teaching in Logistics and Supply Chain
Management
Name(s) of Applicants for Teaching Fellowship:
Dongping Song and Pandian Shunmugham.
Project leader contact details: Dr. Dongping Song, Cookworthy Building
Faculty/School: Plymouth Business School
Ext: 85630
Fax: 85713
Email: Dongping.song@plymouth.ac.uk
Other staff supporting project (but not applying for teaching fellowship):
A Part-time RA.
Proposal (maximum two sides)
Please give an overview of what you want to do and indicate how this relates to the following
criteria:
How does the proposed project
 enhance the quality of learning and teaching at an individual and subject level;
 contribute to the achievement of the Faculty and University Teaching & Learning Strategies (please
remember to refer to the new University T & L Strategy, a draft copy of which can be found under “Support for
Teaching Fellowships” via the EDaLT Website http://intranet.plymouth.ac.uk/edalt/intranet.htm).

develop materials or ideas that can be applied by other colleagues to enhance learning and
teaching more widely;
 result in outcomes that can be used for academic publications or conference presentations?
Please include details about aims, context, methods, outcomes and dissemination and an
approximate timetable for the project.
Overview
An important way to enhance the quality of learning and teaching is the use of purposely-designed IT-based tools. The aim of
this project is to develop an IT-based tool with graphic user interface (GUI) to enable students to better understand the key issues
in supply chain (SC) systems, experience the management of SC through game playing, and improve their core skills of supply
chain management (SCM). The project will contribute to the achievement of the Faculty and University Teaching & Learning
Strategies, e.g. it is a learner-centred approach that encourages active student engagement and provides flexibility in when and
where students carry out their learning; it develops a research-informed and research-based teaching approach by more closely
linking our research findings with teaching; it exploits information and technology to enhance the teaching and learning
experience. The tools may be used in several modules at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels (e.g. logistics and SCM
related modules). The idea of developing IT-based tools may also be applied by other colleagues to enhance learning and
teaching. The outcomes will include a GUI tool and academic publications.
Context
The International Shipping and Logistics Group (ISLG) has four taught Masters programmes and several undergraduate
programmes in the areas of logistics and supply chain management. A great way of learning and teaching logistics and SCM is to
expose students to SC dynamics (Sparling 2002). The Beer Game simulates a classic logistics problem. It was originally
developed by MIT Sloan School of Management in the 1960s and has been played all over the world by people at all levels, from
high school students to presidents of big multinational groups (http://beergame.mit.edu). The purpose of the game is to meet
customer demands for cases of beer through a multi-stage supply chain with minimal costs of backorders and inventory. The
infrastructure of the supply chain and rational decision-making by each player usually lead to creating the bullwhip effect (i.e.
small demand variations downstream result in large variations upstream). It is a classic way of experiencing SC inefficiencies and
developing skills in SCM (e.g. Lee et al. 1997).
A variety of Beer Game simulations have been developed, e.g. the Web Based Beer Game (http://beergame.mit.edu), the
Beergame Portal (http://www.beergame.org). The key problems of using these existing simulations are: (i) they are often
constrained by licences; (ii) although some of them are claimed to be free for education users, the installation requires specific
supporting software and hardware, which may be not available in the UoP; (iii) more importantly, the existing tools have a fixed
configuration, make various assumptions, lack the flexibility to serve our purposes in terms of structure, parameters, decisionmaking, data format, and analysis. Moreover, they cannot incorporate our new research findings in this area, e.g. integrated
inventory manage, vendor managed inventory, and retailer managed inventory in stochastic situations (e.g. Song 2006, Song and
Dinwoodie 2008, Song 2009). It is therefore desirable to develop a purposely-designed GUI Beer Game tool that closely links
our research with teaching and enhances the quality of learning and teaching in logistics and SCM at the UoP.
Methods
Three building blocks have been established in the ISLG in the last few years, which would greatly support the implementation
of this project. Firstly, in the module MBM5208 (International Supply Chain Systems), the applicants have been using a board
Beer Game since 2006. Through this in-class physical Beer Game, the applicants have accumulated good experience in the
organization of the game and students’ learning requirements. Secondly, the applicants developed a DOS (i.e. non-GUI) version
of the MIT Beer Game using c/c++ two years ago. Students have showed great interest in this IT-based interactive game, but
commented that the user interface could be improved and that some assumptions in the MIT Beer Game did not reflect current
business practices. Nevertheless, this DOS version can serve as a good starting point for the development of a more sophisticated
GUI Beer Game. Thirdly, the applicants have undertaken academic research recently in the area of logistics and SCM (e.g. Song
and Dinwoodie 2008, Song 2009), which could be incorporated in this project.
The research process will : (i) be based on more systematic literature review, previous students’ requirements, current business
practices, the existing DOS-version of the Beer Game, and recent research findings, to design an appropriate GUI Beer Game for
our purposes; (ii) code the new GUI tool using Microsoft Visual c++, which is available as UoP software and ensure that the tool
can be run on any UoP PC without additional investment; (iii) validate the GUI tool by comparing with the DOS version and
piloting with staff and students; (iv) apply the new tool in MBM5208 to complement the in-class board game.
It is expected that the new tool will:
 Support a flexible SC structure in setting lead-times of information flow and shipment flow between channel members.
 Allow experimentation with uncertainty in customer demands.
 Treat cost parameters as input data. One criticism of the MIT Beer Game is that the cost parameters are the same for each
channel member. In reality they are often different as, e.g. downstream entities may incur higher inventory cost than
upstream entities for the same product when effort and time have been added to the product.
 Include both interactive and purposely-designed decision-making mechanisms.
 Input and output data in Excel format, which enables students to set up the scenarios and perform statistical analysis easily.
Outcomes and dissemination
The expected outcomes include a GUI tool of the purposely-designed Beer Game and academic publications (e.g. conference
presentations). The tool will be used in the MSc teaching programme in SCM, which complements the in-class board Beer Game
and improves students’ SCM skills. The tool may also be used on undergraduate programmes, e.g. the new Logistics and SCM
top-up degree. The results will also be disseminated through journal articles and conference presentations.
Timetable
01/08/2009 – 01/10/2009: design an appropriate GUI Beer Game;
01/10/2009 – 01/01/2010: code the GUI tool;
01/01/2010 – 31/07/2010: validate the GUI tool and apply it in teaching.
References
Lee, H. L., V. Padmanabhan, and S. Whang. 1997. The bullwhip effect in supply chains. Sloan Management Review, 38: 93-102.
Song, D.P. (2006), Integrated inventory management in a supply chain with uncertainty, Logistics Research Network Annual
Conference 2006, Sept. 6th-8th, Newcastle, UK, 415-420.
Song, D.P. (2009) Optimal integrated ordering and production policy in a supply chain with stochastic lead-time, processing-time
and demand, IEEE Trans. on Automatic Control, 54: (accepted).
Song, D.P. and Dinwoodie, J. (2008) Quantifying the effectiveness of VMI and integrated inventory management in a supply
chain with uncertain lead-times and uncertain demands, Production Planning & Control, 19: 590-600.
Sparling, D. (2002) Simulations and supply chains: strategies for teaching supply chain management, Supply Chain Management,
7: 334-342.
Continue over page
Personal and professional development intentions
Please describe briefly how you intend to use some of the fund for your own personal development.
This project will contribute to our personal development in the following aspects:
 Develop the practices of IT-based learning and teaching;
 Attend academic and educational conferences to exchange practices and ideas;
 Enforce research-informed and research-based teaching.
Outline costings
Brief description
Part-time RA for coding the GUI tool
Staffing
(Please explain
whether for time
release, research
assistant or admin.
support. Include
number of hours
and rate of pay)
Amount required
£3600
A part-time RA is required to code the GUI tool.
The number of hours is estimated to be 222.
The rate of pay will be at grade 5 Point 21.
Materials
Training and professional
development costs
Conferences for two attendees: Business, Management,
Accountancy and Finance (BMAF) Annual Conference, UK, April
2010 or 2011.
£1200
Recruitment and others (e.g. printing).
£200
Other costs
Total Funding requested (£5000)
Applicants for Teaching Fellowships, please confirm that you have attached
□
a short curriculum vitae highlighting your learning and teaching track record (max. 2 sides A4)
If there is more than one applicant for a Teaching Fellowship each member of the group
should provide this information.
□
a letter of commitment and support from your line manager.
If successful, we intend to publish this form internally. We may also want to use the information
provided for publicity purposes. Pleas tick this box if you do not want this information to be included
in such activities.
□
Application deadline Monday, 6th April 2009, 12pm