What is the Hay Game?
You have to play the Hay Game
several times to improve your score. Always record your score. The score of
your first game is the most important one. At the end of the simulation, check
on the graphical pattern of your performance.
How to play the Hay Game?
You are the manager of a farm. Each
week there is a consumption of hay bales (1 bale = 1 ton in the simulation model)
by your animals. The number of hay bales consumed will vary depending on the
week. Your animals will receive the hay bales from the storage if you have enough,
otherwise you will begin running a negative storage. In this case, you have
to buy hay bales from your friend neighbor.
Obviously, you'd like to keep enough hay bales in the storage to meet the requirements of the animals of your farm. You order your hay bales from a hay-producing farm; you can order as many hay bales as you would like or judge necessary each week. In fact, ordering hay bales is the only decision you make in the Hay Game.
The order you place on the hay-producing farm takes two weeks to be harvested and baled. When all is ready, the hay bales are loaded onto trucks (or any other transportation method), which then will start off toward you farm. After two weeks in transit, the truck will unload the hay bales into your storage.
What is the objective of the Hay Game?
Your goal is to keep costs
as low as you can. You will be charged fifty cents ($0.50) per week for each
hay bale (ton) you have in the storage. You will be charged one dollar ($1.00)
per week for each "negative" hay bale (ton) in the storage. Imagine
the "negative" hay bale means you have to buy hay bales from your
neighbor, and s/he charged you a little bit more to offset extra costs.
For instance, if you keep 12 hay bales in the storage, you will be charged $6 dollars per week. After 2 weeks your cost would be $12; after 20 weeks your cost would be $120 (= 20*6). The fifty cent per week charge on storage represents your cost for the space, maintenance, cleaning, etc.
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You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open pdf files. The Hay Game is free of charge. |
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The current version of the Hay Game is 1.7.8656.20602.
Previous versions can be downloaded from here.
No registration is needed. Nonetheless, you are welcome to submit your comments to improve the Hay Game by going to the CONTACT US web page.
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Dr. Luis O. Tedeschi |
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Additional references are listed in the System Dynamics Society Publications web page.
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Click here to download more instructions on how to play the Hay Game.
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The Hay Game was based on The Beer Game. The Beer Game was developed to introduce students, managers and executives to concepts of system dynamics. The purpose of the game is to illustrate the key principle that "structure produces behavior." Players experience the pressures of playing a role in a complex system and can see long range effects during the course of the game. Each player participates as a member of a team that must meet its customers' demands. The object of the game is to minimize the total cost for your team.
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Click here to install a JAVA version of the Beer Game by Michael Li and David Simchi-Levi.
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