ERPsim - Distribution Game Manual EN PDF

ERP SIMULATION GAME:
Changing the Way We Learn ERP

Systems
Notes for Using ERPsim
Pierre-Majorique Léger, Ph.D.

Jacques Robert, Ph.D.
Gilbert Babin, Ph.D.
WITH THE COLLABORATION OF:

Patrick CHARLAND, Ph.D.
Harvey FELDSTEIN
Derick LYLE, MBA
Jean-François MICHON, M.Sc.
Robert PELLERIN, Ph.D.
Bret WAGNER, Ph.D.
Michael WYBO, Ph.D.
ISBN: 978-0-9866653-1-8
http : //erpsim.hec.ca
Introduction
ERPsim is a unique business simulation technology developed at HEC Montréal
that enables the simulation of near-real-life business contexts of large corporate
information systems. There are other simulation games which allow you to take a strategic
view of an enterprise, but ERPsim is closely couple with ERP technolo-gies so participants
have to use a real ERP system like they would in a real context.
ERP Simulation Game : Changing the Way We Teach and Learn ERP Systems
© Léger et al. ERPsim Lab, HEC Montréal.
ERP Simulation Game :
Changing the Way we Teach and Learn ERP Systems
Part 1 : Introduction to ERPsim
The Genesis of ERPsim
In 2004, a group of professors from HEC Montréal used this literature as a basis for creating
a business simulation designed to transform the way ERP system usage is taught in the
class-room. Today, the ERP Simulation Game is now used by more than 180 faculty members
and in more than 170 universities worldwide. As of June 2009, more than 12,000 students
annually have played the game in the USA, Canada, Australia, Germany, Sweden, Italy, India,
Russia and many others countries across the SAP University Alliance. Since September 2008, the
ERP Simulation Game is also used commercially by Baton Simulations. Professionals at many
Fortune 1000 organizations are now introduced to SAP by playing the simula tion game. ERPsim is
also used in research to run experimental protocols.
The ERP Simulation game (Léger, 2006, Léger et al, 2007) is an innovative “learning-by-doing” and
“problem-based” approach to teaching ERP concepts. During these games, students have to run a
business with a real-life ERP system (SAP®). The original simulation places the students at the heart
of a make to stock manufacturing company, where they must operate the full business cycle (plan,
procure, produce and sell), and in so doing experience the value of up and downstream information
visibility. This visibility, and the coordination and communication that it enables, is the core value
proposition of an ERP system. They discover the importance of process integration across functional
silos by understanding firsthand the impact of not making a decision in time or how a poor decision
can impact the follow on of a business cycle. By living the simulation, in real time, students gain an
excellent understanding of what it takes to operate a real company with an integrated system as
opposed to a simulated environment that only focuses on strategy. Using standard and customized
ERP reports, students have to analyze these transactions and make business decisions to ensure the
profitability of their operations.
ERPsim software was developed to automate the sales process, so that every firm receives a large
number of orders in each quarter of the simulation. Using standard and customized reports,
students have to analyze these transactions and make business decisions to ensure the profitability
of their operations.
The pedagogical objectives of this these games are fivefold :

• Gaining a hands-on understanding of the concepts underlying enterprise systems ;
• Experiencing the benefits of enterprise integration firsthand ;
• Developing technical ERP system skills ;
• Learning how to work as a team ;
• Learning how to create, execute, and adapt a business strategy in a real-time environment.
ERP Simulation Game:
Changing the Way we Teach and Learn ERP Systems
Part 2 : Using ERPsim
Using ERPsim
Chapter : learning erpsim distriBution simulation game
Since 2004, a variety of games has been developed, with each game focusing on different
pedagogical objectives. To support these games, we created different companies to better support
these teaching objectives : a manufacturing company producing muesli cereals was developed to
illustrate the integration of the planning, procurement, production, and sales processes in manufac-
turing enterprises (Léger et al. 2011a); a utility company was developed to illustrate the concepts
of treasury management using an ERP. Finally, a distribution company selling bottled water was
developed to teach the basic concepts of process integration, focusing on planning, procurement,
and sales.
Introduction to the Distribution Simulation Game

In this simulation game, participants must operate the full business cycle (plan, procure, and sell) of
a distribution company. Specifically, they will operate a wholesale distribution company that sells
bottled water in Germany. During the simulation, they will take control of their company and make
all key decisions. For the most part, clerical functions that are required to operate the company,
but which are not decisions, such as invoicing receipt of payment from customers or sending
payments to vendors, are automated by the simulator. This will allow participants to focus on the
more strategic aspects of operating this wholesaler. The only interface used by the participants in
the simulation is SAP, a real-life ERP system. Just like they would working for a real company, partici-
pants will use the ERP system to generate reports, analyze the necessary information to make and
implement their decisions, by entering or adjusting information in ERP system itself.
ERP Simulation Game : Changing The Way We Teach And Learn ERP Systems
Using ERPsim
Water Distribution Company
Team members will share management responsibility in this bottle distributional business with up
to three or four other team members. Each team faces competitors, specifically the other teams
that also operate bottled water distributors, and the simulator that sells other beverage products.
The goal is to ensure the profitability of the organization. Participants will be able to track profit-
ability and other performance measures by using standard reports in the system.
The customer base is the German market. This market has been segmented into three regions
– North, South and West (see Figure 1).
Figure 1 - The German Market
North
45 retailers
West
40 retailers
South
38 retailers
The bottled water sold is available in three flavours and two sizes. Natural spring water, carbonated
water and lemon flavoured carbonated water, each in 1L and 500mL formats.
As a wholesale distributor, the company’s target customers are small retailers throughout the
country. The products are shipped in boxes of 12 or 24 bottles, depending on the bottle formats.
The list of products for each company is show in the next table.
Using ERPsim
Table - List of Available Products
PRODUCT CODE PRODUCT DESCRIPTION UNITS IN BOX COST OF BOXES

$$-B01 1L ClearPure 12 bottles 11.99
$$-B02 1L Spritz 12 bottles 14.99
$$-B03 1L Lemon Spritz 12 bottles 16.99
$$-B04 500mL ClearPure 24 bottles 16.99
$$-B05 500mL Spritz 24 bottles 19.99
$$-B06 500mL Lemon Spritz 24 bottles 22.99
In the above table, the “$” sign stands for the company letter. For instance, the product code of
product 1 for Company A is AA-B01. The first three products are 12-bottle boxes of 1 litre bottles,
the next three are 24-bottle boxes of half litre bottles. The last column lists the purchasing costs of
each product.
This market is highly competitive because products are simple and generic mass consumption
items. The customer base is essentially small retailers throughout the country identified in the SAP
system as a distribution channel, specifically Channel 18. There are essentially two mechanisms by
which to attract and retain your customers – pricing and marketing. The pricing decision is national:
prices are the same for all customers.
For marketing, one can independently market each of the six products differently across the three
regions. Marketing is persuasive. That is to say, marketing influences the customers to buy the
advertised brand instead of the competitors’, not how much water they will drink. The size of the
demand in a region is fairly stable and is mainly influenced by price.
On average, the market share per company can be expected to be around €6000 of sales orders
per day per company in the game. Since companies are a wholesale distributor, the products are
not directly manufactured. The products are purchased from a single supplier, who charges a fairly
stable price throughout the simulation.
A Quick Introduction to the Business Processes

In the Distribution Game, typical business flow begins with planning based on some kind
of demand forecasting, followed by procurement of the necessary product to meet
that demand, and finally sales and delivery to customers. To facilitate the understanding of
these activities, however, we introduce them in reverse; this way, students get to master
the full process step by step. In the first round, students will concentrate only on sales. Each
company begins with existing inventory of product. Later, students will learn how to replenish
and adjust their planning strategies.
The simulation will last for 60 simulated days and will be split into three rounds of 20 days each. The
pace of the simulation will be about 20 minutes for each round or roughly 1 minute per simulated
day. Since these are non-perishable products, any inventory at the end of a round is carried over
Using ERPsim
and remains available for sale at the beginning of the next round. Due to the competitive nature of
the industry, customers will not place advance orders for products that are not in stock. They will
simply purchase elsewhere instead. Customers will place one single order for all desired products
simultaneously. Thus, if a company does not have a full range of products in stock or if it does not
have competitive prices on all its products, it is likely to lose many orders to the competition. The
sole objective of each team is to maximize profits.
Round 1
In the first round of the simulation you must manage the price of all six of your products and make
a decision about your marketing investment strategy. You can adjust both of these at any point
during the simulation. To make your decision, you will need to know how to operate the corres-
ponding transactions in SAP and will need information on which to base those decisions.
Let us now turn to the SAP system to learn how to run the relevant reports and operational trans-
actions. As we start to explore the system, don’t be concerned that you will forget the steps to
complete any operation. You have been provided with a single page job-aid to assist you. The
job-aid is mapped to an overview of the business process, and color-coded, to give you the context
to find what you’re looking for. If you have not already done so, obtain the job-aid, and keep it near
you so you can orient yourself between it and the system as we go. This will make it easier for you
to find what you need later on.
By the end of this video, we will have seen and discussed all the transactions on the job-aid. We will
explore the relevance of each of these in their context in the business cycle as we need to.
Look at your job-aid. The transactions for round one can all be found to the right, in the area marked
Sales Process.
Each time a simulation event is run, an SAP environment is assigned for that event, and each team
of participants is assigned one of the 26 companies available. Within those teams, each person is
assigned a unique user account with associated username and password. This information is vital,
as without access to the environment you cannot participate. The general format of these is also
documented on the job-aid, as a reminder.
In the context of the distribution simulation, the general form of the username is as you see it
before you and as it appears on the job-aid.
You must substitute the “$” for your team letter, in our example “A”, and the “#” for your user number,
in our example “3”. The password for each event is also on the job-aid, and it is case sensitive. You
must type it exactly as it appears. The SAP server and client will also be assigned to you. There is
nothing to substitute here. You simply use these as provided.
Using ERPsim
For the purpose of this training, we will demonstrate everything as though you were assigned team
“A”, user “1”. Keep in mind that when it comes time for you to practice; or more importantly if you
already have been assigned a practice environment; you must substitute team letter “A” and user
“1” with those that you have actually been assigned. Time to get hands-on, let’s log in!
First we start the SAP application, select the correct server and click on Log In.
At the main login page, you must enter the details of the user account and environment that you
have been assigned. In addition to selecting the SAP server that we will use, SAP uses a concept
called a Client, which is a virtual partitioning of one server into independent environments.
Each simulation uses a specific SAP client. We can run multiple simulations by using different clients
instead of needing to have many SAP servers.
Enter the client, your user and password. Remember, if you have a practice environment and are
following along while you watch this video, don’t use team “A” and user “1” as per the example you
see here. Use the team and user you have been assigned.
At first log in, you may be prompted to change the default password with a permanent one. In that
case, select something carefully and write it down. If you forget it, you will not be able to log in
again in the future!
Once you have confirmed the password, it will be permanent and you are now connected to SAP.
While unfamiliar to most people the first time they use it, the SAP interface is not difficult to learn.
There are some key basic skills to learn, and from there the rest becomes easy with a little practice.
Let us learn about the first two we have just seen.
In SAP, when you want to confirm something, click on the “Enter” or “Confirm” icon,. This can
appear in two forms, depending on the context.
This first icon, ,we used to confirm our login details.
This second icon, , we used to confirm the new password.
Whenever you see either of these icons, clicking it will confirm your action, or proceed to the next
step. These are synonymous with hitting the enter key.
We will now spend some time getting comfortable with the SAP interface. Gaining confidence in
this area quickly is important, as we want to be focusing on the business decisions we are going to
make, not fumbling around trying to remember where everything is.
There are two basic ways to get started in SAP. Both approaches accomplish an action referred to as
“running a transaction.” A transaction is simply an operation or report that we would like to use or
look at. We can run a transaction from the user menu, or by using its transaction code, also known
as its technical name.
For new users, the user menu is the easiest way to find and run a transaction. The SAP menu contains
a set of transactions that the user has access to, typically grouped together in folders by purpose,
business context, or some other classification. We have grouped the transactions together in the
order that you will learn them, to make each one easier to find.
Using ERPsim
Let’s begin by first running a simple report. We know that we will begin the simulation with starting
inventory of finished products. As you sell off this inventory, you will want to monitor how much
you still have left. We can run the inventory report to give us this information. Drill down into the
menu, find the inventory report and double click on it to run it.
Notice that to expand, or drill down into the folders in the menu we clicked on the small triangle
icon. Wherever you see this icon, you can click on it to see more detail, or child items. To hide or
collapse that detail, simply click on the icon again.
The inventory report contains the list of all of your products, and how many units you currently
have left in stock. In SAP terminology, your products are referred to as materials, and referenced by
a material code. There is also a description of the product so you can tell which it is. The material
code is prefixed with your team letter, repeated twice.
This report also has information about your warehouse storage capacity and total inventory.
In SAP, reports are always up to date when you first run them. But once run, they do not update
automatically. Most of the reports have a refresh button.
Whenever you see this icon, , click on it to request for the data in the report to be refreshed.
Of course, this will only have an effect when the simulation is actually running. When the simulation
is paused, time is effectively standing still!
On most of the reports, the report heading will also show you how old the information is, basically,
when the report was last run.
This is reported in terms of how the simulation measures time. It is also a useful way to track what
date it is in the simulation. Refresh a report, and you will immediately see what the current simula-
tion date is.
Note that the simulation reports time in quarters and days. A quarter is synonymous with one
round of the distribution simulation.
Refer back to your job-aid. Find the box marked Stock Levels. Inside it you will see the Inventory
Report, followed by the characters “ZMB52”. “ZMB52” is the technical name for the inventory report.
There are no steps to complete to run the Inventory Report, so the information on the job-aid is a
reminder of the purpose, or information content, of the report.
There is another report that you will find very useful during the first round of the simulation: the
Summary Sales Report. With the help of the job-aid, you will discover that its technical name is
“ZVC2”. The technical name can also be used to run a transaction. On the SAP toolbar, to the right
of the “Enter” icon, is a drop-down control. You can type the technical name into this space, and
click on the “Enter” icon to run the relevant transaction.
Despite the ease with which we can run a transaction if we know the technical name, SAP will not
allow you to run a new transaction while you still have another open. You must first return to the
user menu before you can run another transaction.
The Summary Sales Report contains a day-by-day, product level summary of the sales orders you
have received from your customers, specifically the number of separate orders you have received,
Using ERPsim
the total units ordered and revenue value. Since the simulation has not yet started there are no
orders yet. Once the round begins, you will need to check this report often to monitor sales activity.
There are two other sales reports. You are free to explore these during the first round of the simula-
tion, but we will discuss the information available in each of these after the first round is complete.
Their use will be more transparent once we have received some orders and there is data to be seen!
Note that the green “Back” icon was used to return to the user menu the first time, but the
yellow “Exit” icon was used the second time.
There is a third red “Cancel” icon grouped with these two. The behaviour of these icons varies
from transaction to transaction. In general, the simpler the transaction the more likely two of the
icons will have the same function.
In general, use the green “Back” icon to go back to the previous screen in a transaction. Use the
yellow “Exit” icon to exit the transaction and return to the user menu.
When you are at the user menu, this icon is also used to exit, or log out of, the SAP system.
Use the red icon to cancel what you were doing in a transaction. This is more common in
response to a system error message.
These are general guidelines for when to use these three icons, but be aware that they are the
icons with the most inconsistent behaviour from transaction to transaction in the SAP system.
Don’t worry; you will quickly learn the handful of transactions with specific behaviours outside the
general guidelines.
Now that we have learned how to run reports to get information, we have a basis by which we can
make decisions. Now we need to learn how to commit those decisions to SAP, so that the simulation
will act upon them.
In the first round there are two decisions you need to constantly revisit: your sales price and your
daily marketing expenditure. Let us explore where these are in the SAP system, and how we change
them.
By referring to the job-aid, you will see that Condition Maintenance is the transaction needed to
change prices. When you run this, you will see a screen quite different from those seen so far. The
job-aid tells us that the first step we must do is to expand the Prices folder and then find and
execute the Price List item.
The screen we are presented is of a format very common to many SAP transactions. It is called a
selection screen. Its purpose is to allow you to focus your attention on a specific subset of items,
rather than everything available in the system. Many of the options have been set to default values
to make your job easier.
The job-aid instructs us to enter a value of 18 for the Distribution channel. We can optionally enter a
material code also if we want to change the price for just one material. If there is no mention of any
of the other fields, leave these alone!
Click on the “Execute” icon.
Using ERPsim
You are now presented with the list of materials, and their associated prices in distribution channel
18. Recall that distribution channel 18 regroups customers operating convenience stores.
To revise your price you simply click and modify the value in the relevant cell.
There is one important final step to complete the price revision. You must save your changes, or you
have changed nothing!
For decision making transactions, there are two important icons – the execute icon and the save
icon .
The Execute icon is used as the final step to processing in SAP.
If the operation is automated, or there is no option for review, then this is also the final save.
Where you must enter or modify information, or are given an opportunity to review, you must use
the “Save” icon to commit your changes.
After you click “Save”, a system status message will inform you if the operation was successful:
green if it was successful, yellow for successful but with a warning or caution, and red for failure.
Our final decision transaction for this round is marketing expenditure. This transaction is used to set
the daily budget for marketing. The simulation automates the actual expenditure based on what
you currently have set.
Enter the amount for each material in each region that you allocate as the daily marketing budget.
Click on the “Save” icon to commit your decision to the system. To revise your plan, enter new
values or overwrite the old ones. Always remember to save your changes.
If you want to stop spending anything on marketing, or make drastic changes, you can click on the
“Clear” button to remove all values. Clear does not save. You must click on “Save”, or enter new
values and click on “Save” to commit your decision.
Recall that marketing is by region, as well as by specific product. The influence on the customer is
persuasive, from one product to another. If you market multiple products in the same region, not
only will they compete against the competition’s offerings for brand space, but also against each
other! Keep this in mind. Carpet bombing is a low yield, high cost marketing strategy.
Let us recap our situation. We have six products, which come in two sizes, one litre and a half litre.
These products come in three flavours, ClearPure which is plain water, Spritz – carbonated water,
and LemonSpritz – carbonated water with a hint of lemon flavouring. Large bottles are sold in
boxes of 12 and small bottles sold in boxes of 24. Your supplier prices are fixed, and your initial
pricing is set to give you a gross margin of three Euros per box. You begin the simulation with start-
ing inventory of all 6 products.
The following table contains the relevant data.
Please note that you can only sell what you have in inventory and you cannot replenish in the 1st
round.
At this point, we will start the simulator and you are free to use the system and take action as you
see fit!
Using ERPsim
As the simulation runs through the first few days, you should start to see sales orders coming in,
and your inventory reducing.
Revisit your pricing and marketing decisions often to fine tune your sales rate with small adjust-
ments.
Round 2
Now that round one has ended, let’s look at the results in ERPsim.
At the end of each simulation round, this viewer page is updated with financial and operational
results of all the teams in that simulation. With this information you can gauge how well you are
doing in relation to the competition.
In the SAP system, we have much more detailed information about your own company. Let us
return and explore some new reports, as well as revisit the ones we already know about to see what
story they tell us.
In order to monitor your company’s financial heath, run the financial statement report. Its technical
name is F.01.
This report has one of the most detailed selection screens. Fortunately we are not interested in
most of these, only three of them. You must enter your company code, which is simply your team
letter repeated twice. You must select “SIM1” as the Financial Statement Version.
To control the output format of the report, you can choose from the set of List output options.
Select the ALV Tree control option, and then execute the report. At some point, you will encounter
a system warning, or request for confirmation as we see here. To continue, click on the “Confirm”
icon.
This standard SAP report provides you with the balance sheet and the income statement of your
company. If you have selected the ALV Tree Control display, you can see more details on each
section of this report by expanding the folder.
You can find your current bank account cash balance, in the current assets section of the balance
sheet.
At the end of the report is the item you should be most interested in your net income. This is your
profit, and the ultimate measure of whether you are managing your company well or not!
The net income line corresponds to the cumulative profit or loss of your company since the begin-
ning of the simulation. Starting from the second round, the report will show the financial results as
they were at the end of the previous round. The difference column shows changes for the current
round, allowing you to get an idea of your current performance against previous rounds.
Using ERPsim
Use the sales summary report to analyse your sales performance over the previous round. In
addition to this sales report, there are also two others. “ZVA05” offers more detailed information
about each sales order. Where the product was sold (Distribution channel and Area), which product
was sold, to whom (sold-to-party), the number of units sold, the sales revenue value, and the price
at which the sale was made. You can also see information about when the customer will pay the
invoice. In the distribution simulation, all customers pay their invoice exactly 10 days after delivery.
The Price Market Report is the only place other than the simulation viewer where you can get infor-
mation about your competition. Think of this as an industry report published for everyone. It is only
published once in each five simulated days, with a summary of sales activity for the industry as a
whole over the previous five days. This will permit you to benchmark your decisions against the rest
of the market, as you will be able to see the average sales price of orders placed, total units sold, and
revenue value for each product in each distribution channel.
Now that round one has ended, you are probably out of stock of most, if not all of your products.
You need to learn to replenish inventory. Before we go over the transaction for this, you need to
learn about our current re-supply strategy and the delivery lead time of our supplier.
You need to complete the procurement process based on your replenishment strategy. Your suppli-
ers can take up to three days to ship you what you ordered. You can use the ERP system to calculate
how much of each product is needed based on existing replenishment and inventory levels. Now
let’s turn to the SAP system to learn how to run the relevant reports and operational transactions.
Procurement is a two-step process. First, you must generate the procurement plan. Once satisfied
with the plan, you need to create purchase orders to be sent to your supplier to actually place the
order.
In Round 2 you will decide how often you send replenishment orders to your supplier, each time
restocking to the inventory levels you started with. You will continue to adjust your sales price and
marketing spending, as you did for Round 1. Look at your job-aid. These transactions can all be
found in the centre, in the area marked Procurement Process.
The MRP calculation process uses the independent requirements (or replenishment level) and the
current stock levels to calculate how much of each product needs to be ordered from your supplier.
If for example your replenishment level is set at 1,000 boxes of 1L ClearPure and there are 340 boxes
in stock; the MRP will generate a requisition to purchase 660 boxes of 1L ClearPure.
Run the MRP transaction. Its technical name is MD01.
The behaviour of the MRP can be controlled with a variety of parameters. For our purposes we must
set these to those that we need. Set the parameters as follows.
Using ERPsim
Table - MRP parameters
PARAMETER VALUE
Plant : Your plant.
Processing Key : NEUPL
Create purchase requisition : 1
Schedules lines : 3
Create MRP list : 1
Planning mode : 3
Display material list : Check the box if it is not already
checked.
Once you filled in all the details, you will need to click “Enter” to begin the MRP process. A warning
notice is displayed at the bottom of the page, advising you to check your parameters before
confirming. Click “Enter” again to proceed. Confirm that you want to start the planning run. After
SAP completes the planning process, you will see information on what planning items have been
created.
The MRP process creates requisitions which are internal documents. To place orders with your
vendor you need to create and send them purchase orders. SAP provides a simple way to accept all
purchase requisitions and aggregate them to create new purchase orders. The transaction “ME59N”
automatically creates consolidated purchase orders for each vendor.
The default selection parameters for this report are all that are needed. Simply click on the “Execute”
icon to have SAP perform the conversion process. You will see a summary of the purchase orders
created.
At some point during the simulation you are bound to see “no suitable requisition found” at the
bottom level of your screen. The system is telling you that there were no new requisitions that
needed to be processed. To see this message, execute the procedure again.
Since you just created all the purchase orders you needed, and have not re-run the MRP, there are
no new requisitions to be processed. If you encounter this message, either you have already run the
process, forgotten to run the MRP, or the MRP has not generated any requisitions.
This might be the case if you have sufficient inventory and purchase orders in the system already
when you ran the MRP. Retrace your steps and ensure you have run all the transactions properly
and in the correct sequence.
The purchase order tracking report shows the list of all the purchase orders in the system. It shows
the quantity of each material ordered and the price you pay. The last columns are the most useful.
The delivery or completion status informs you if the materials have been delivered to your
warehouse or not. The goods column informs you on which simulation day the goods were deliv-
ered, or will be delivered. The payment column informs you when you must pay for them. To get to
the transaction, locate “ZME2N” in the transaction list.
Using ERPsim
Let us recap. You must now manage the sales process as well as the procurement cycle. Try to
balance your rate of sales with the frequency that you perform the procurement process. A key
success factor to maximizing your profit is ensuring that you always have inventory available for
sale. Remember, your customers will not accept backorders.
see fit!
At the end of the round you will once again want to gauge how well you are doing, and try to
improve your performance. Having tried to balance your sales rate with your procurement cycle,
and with two rounds worth of reporting data to analyse, we are now in a position to consider
adjusting our strategy.
R 3
Now that you have a better feel for your customer markets, and your supply-chain characteristics,
perhaps it is time for you to revisit your demand forecasts and change your replenishment levels. In
essence, you should optimize the demand forecasts in the context of your replenishment cycle and
supplier behaviour. Perhaps certain products have higher demand than others. We could optimize
our inventory levels and replenishment cycle to adjust for this. While there is no inventory holding
cost in this simulation, it will be a key decision factor in the real world.
Let us turn to SAP and learn how to change our demand forecasts. Look at your job-aid. These
transactions can all be found to the left, in the area marked Planning Process. Transaction code
“MD61” is where you enter the independent requirements which are then used to execute the MRP
process.
We want to manage the forecasts for all our materials at the same time. They have been placed into
a product group for this purpose. At the initial selection screen, choose the Product Group selec-
tion option and enter the product group. It is the same as your company code, that is, your team
letter repeated twice.
At the planning table screen, you will see a schedule of months. Only the second column should
have any values in it. From here you can adjust these from their current values. The simulation
controls time, but as far as the SAP system is concerned everything is happening on the same date
as today. Do not use the other columns in this table. Only modify the values in the second column.
Don’t forget to save your changes!
Let us recap. You must now manage the sales process, as well as the procurement cycle, and can
adjust your replenishment strategy.
This is the last round of the simulation. There is no penalty for having inventory at the end. Those
products simply remain an asset on your balance sheet. Take all that you have learned and do your
best.
see fit.
© Léger et al. (2013) ERPsim Lab, HEC Montréal.
ERP SIMULATION GAME:
Changing the Way We Teach and Learn ERP Systems
Pierre-Majorique Léger is a Jacques Robert is Director of Gilbert Babin is Director of

Full professor in information the Department of Information the Bachelor of Business
technologies at HEC Montréal, Technology at HEC Montréal. Administration Program at
director of the ERPsim Lab and He holds a Ph.D. in economics HEC Montréal, and professor of
co-directeur of Tech3Lab. He from the University of Western Information Technologies. He
holds a Ph.D. in industrial engin- Ontario. He is a Fellow at CIRANO holds a Ph.D. from Rensselaer
eering from École Polytechnique where he served as vice-presi- Polytechnic Institute. His thesis
de Montréal and has done dent responsible of the eBusi- earned him the Del and Ruth
post-doctoral studies in infor- ness Group. His research is in Karger Dissertation Award. He is
mation technologies at HEC the field of applied game theory, a member of ACM and CS-IEEE.
Montréal and NYU Stern. He is mechanism design and experi- He has over 60 papers published
the principal inventor of ERPsim, mental economics. Professor in refereed journals and confer-
a simulation game to teach ERP Robert is one of the co-invent- ences. His research interests
concepts, which is now used by ors of the “HEC Montreal ERP include distributed systems and
thousands of university students Simulation Games” and chair- their integration. He is one of the
worldwide and many Fortune man of Baton Simulations, co-inventors of ERPsim.
1000 organisations. His current the company which owns the
research focuses on NeuroIS. commercial rights of ERPsim
software.
© 2013, Léger et al,

ERPsim Lab, HEC Montréal
3000 Côte-Sainte-Catherine Road
Montréal, Quebec
Canada H3T 2A7 http : //erpsim.hec.ca

ERPsim - Distribution Game Manual EN PDF

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ERPsim - Distribution Game Manual EN PDF

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ERP SIMULATION GAME:

Changing the Way We Learn ERP

Pierre-Majorique Léger, Ph.D.

WITH THE COLLABORATION OF:

Part 1 : Introduction to ERPsim

The pedagogical objectives of this these games are fivefold :

Part 2 : Using ERPsim

Chapter : learning erpsim distriBution simulation game

Introduction to the Distribution Simulation Game

Water Distribution Company

Table - List of Available Products

PRODUCT CODE PRODUCT DESCRIPTION UNITS IN BOX COST OF BOXES

A Quick Introduction to the Business Processes

Table - MRP parameters

Pierre-Majorique Léger is a Jacques Robert is Director of Gilbert Babin is Director of

© 2013, Léger et al,

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