The Game

Production Planning and Inventory Control @ Virginia Tech

Background

The purpose of The Production Game, affectionately known by students as The Game, is to teach the interactions between decisions and the resulting performance measures, such as inventory levels, resource levels, costs, and profits, for a production system. The Game, originally developed by Salwa Ammar and Ronald Wright at LeMoyne College, has been tailored and expanded to address learning objectives at Virginia Tech. Historically, The Game was played manually with paper products, checks, and transactions, requiring substantial time and space resources for the classes of 200+ students. In Spring 2020, Kimberly Ellis and Natalie Cherbaka initiated an effort to digitize and improve The Game, collaborating with students Andrew Thomas, Matthew Garlington, Ben LaBine, and Melissa Tilashalski. Implementing the digitized version of The Game successfully addressed the initial concern by reducing the resources necessary to execute; moreover, student learning benefited through iterative engagement, smaller team sizes, improved real-world scenarios, focus on team collaboration, and the reduction of tasks unrelated to learning outcomes. Future iterations will test additional software enhancements and capture student engagement measures.