This paper discusses the use of linear programming optimization in an undergraduate supply chain management class at Christopher Newport University in conjunction with online simulation game. The supply chain management class is a required major class offered to students enrolled in a BSBA program with concentration in management. The class is a broad overview of the supply chain management discipline. In order to provide students with a hands-on experience designing and managing the supply chain, the supply chain simulation game by LittleField Technology is used. The paper provides the game overview, as well as formulation of LP problem in order to design an optimal supply chain to meet customer's demand while maximizing the company profit. Use of simulation games to illustrate academic concepts is not new. Active learning and simulation-based pedagogy are becoming more prevalent in supply chain management classes. At the same time management science tools and techniques, such as applications of linear programming are oftentimes covered in a separate introductory course. Models, discussed in management science often cover various topics in a piece-meal fashion. Typical material covered includes direct transportation model, transshipment model, assignment problem, and a few others. In order to avoid "silo learning" affect and illustrate the application of management science to solving supply chain problems, this paper describes an attempt to integrate linear programming optimization with the simulation game in an undergraduate supply chain management course. The supply chain simulation game used in the class is offered by Responsive Learning Technologies (www.responsive.net). In the simulation game students are required to manage a two-tiered supply chain company in order to maximize profit. In the course of the game teams of 2-3 students must identify in which locations they want to build production factories, how much manufacturing daily capacity to procure for each factory, and where to construct distribution warehouses. Together with facility locations, students must address which modes of transportation to use between factories and warehouses, as well as between warehouses to customer markets. The assignment implies that supply chain, designed by students, must be balanced, with total production capacity sufficient to meet total demand. Therefore, the starting point of the supply chain configuration is creating a demand forecast for each region where the virtual company operates in the supply chain game. In this paper we propose an exercise where the configuration of the supply chain described above is determined by formulating and solving an integrated facility location and trans-shipment LP problem. Such analysis will provide an application of the management science modeling approach to a simulated scenario which models real business issue. It is important that an introductory class in management science is either a pre- or a co-requisite for such exercise.
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