Supply Chain Lab Open the game
Slide 1 of 4 · you already use this

Your bank does this for you every day

A big payment leaves your account and your phone buzzes. Nobody at the bank is watching your account. A rule is watching, and the rule acts on its own.

When this happens
Money leaves your accountThe rule is always watching. You are not.
→
Check something
Is it over $500?A plain yes or no question.
→
Then do this
Send a text messageIt happens whether you remember or not.

That is the whole idea

When this happens → check something → then do this. That chain is a workflow. You have used hundreds of them without calling them anything.

In this game, a small coffee company runs that same chain four times, every morning at 08:00, to keep coffee on the shelf.

Slide 2 of 4 · one morning at the roaster

Four steps, 08:00, every day

A small Melbourne company roasts coffee. Beans are ordered from a supplier and take 3 days to arrive. Watch one morning run.

08:00 · nobody pressed anything

What it looks at

The beans in the store room 35 kg left
What sold last week so it knows the pattern
An email from the supplier written like a normal email
1. LookGathers those three things
→
2. UnderstandReads the email and works out how much to buy
→
3. DoBuy more beans, or run a promotion
→
4. Check the billDoes it match what arrived?

What you get

The delivery date found inside the email
How much to order worked out for you
One yes/no for a human you approve the spend
A bill paid or stopped wrong bills never get paid

Why bother

A person could do all of this. It takes about half an hour, and they have to remember to do it on a busy Monday. The chain does it at 08:00 whether anyone remembers or not. Step 2 is the only one that needs AI, because only that step has to read an ordinary English sentence.

Slide 3 of 4 · how to play

Four things to do

You cannot break it. Press Reset whenever you like and start over.

  1. Press ▶ Play and watch one morning run. Just watch which box lights up, and in what order.
  2. Click any box. A panel opens and shows what went in, what that step did, and what came out. This is the part that teaches you something.
  3. Now break it on purpose. Press a red button: Supplier delay Stale warehouse feed Duplicate invoice. Run two more days and watch the numbers at the top move.
  4. Press Repair, then open Debrief and answer the three questions.
Slide 4 of 4 · try this one

Try this one first

The supplier is late

First, run one normal day. Look at "unfilled orders" at the top. It should be about zero.

Now press Supplier delay and run two more days.

Watch what happens. Unfilled orders start climbing. Click the Understand box and read the date it found. It read the email correctly. The AI did nothing wrong.

So what went wrong? The delay changed the beans from 3 days away to 6. Reading the email faster does not make the beans arrive faster. That is the lesson.

Answer these in the debrief

  1. Which of the four steps really needed AI? Which only needed a simple rule? Which needed a person?
  2. Why can a successful campaign make performance worse?
  3. On the quiet day, why did nothing run?

One sentence each is enough. The answers are all visible in the boxes and the log at the bottom of the game.

Open the game →

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