Configuration - Transparency Modes and Visibility Limit

In the Beer Game, you can play with several visibility settings.

This helps you showcase the importance of collaboration, for example by playing two game rounds without/with communication.

In this article, we will describe the parameters you can use to adjust the levels of visibility for players in the Beer Game.

Transparency Mode

You can configure the transparency mode from the "General" settings of a Beer Game round.

Learn more about the potential options below, and their impact on the game.

Transparency Disabled

When no transparency mode is enabled, players can only see their own stock/backorders and incoming quantities (based on the "visibility limit" described here).

With this setup, participants tend to adopt a non collaborative approach, as they try to optimize their own local situation.

Full Transparency

Conversely with full transparency, players are able to view each-others stocks, quantities in-transit, and validated orders.

They can adjust their ordering strategy to consider what they know about the future demand from their client, and the supply capacity from their supplier.

View supplier backorders

When setting up the Transparency mode on "View supplier backorders", players are able to see if their supplier still has quantities to ship to them as backorders.

This can be more realistic, as in the real world you should be able to keep track of the quantities that your supplier is still due to send to you. Here is how it looks:

View inventories but not ETAs

This setup can be useful to showcase the importance of tracking shipments using Real-Time Transportation Visibility Systems.

In this case, the stock/backorder information is shared among players, but there is an uncertainty in the delivery date and shipped quantity of future deliveries (based on the "visibility limit" parameter described below).

Orders Visibility Limit

For each role supply capability, you can decide the threshold (in number of weeks) from which players are not able to view the exact shipped quantity and delivery date.

This parameter can be updated from inside the role settings:

For example, if you setup a visibility limit of 1 week, players will only be able to view the incoming quantities for the next week.