The blood supply game

Product and service supply chains are usually complex and difficult to manage. Making students of supply chain management (SCM) courses realise these complex principles of real life problems is not as easy. Business games played in the class or in computer labs is a pedagogical way which assists the understanding of theories, put ideas into action and educates in an interactive and enjoyable way. In this paper, we present a business game which mimics the supply chain of blood units from donors to patients. The game models the material and information flows in a production-distribution channel serving patients in hospitals which need blood transfusions according to doctors´ requests in different periods and with independent distributions. The game is played by individuals on a PC with Microsoft Excel exploiting a VBA environment. The game can be an effective teaching tool.