FloraPark (the Flower Game): A Supply Chain Contract and Collaboration Simulation

Abstract

Intensive competition among supply chains often forces trading partners to collaborate despite their conflict of interests. Supply chain contracts and collaboration theory is well established in the academic literature to align the interests but much less conveyed to students and industry professionals for a practical impact. Although the Beer Game captures the bullwhip effect and the value of information sharing, it ignores the conflict of interests, that is, price and quantity bargaining, among the trading partners. We describe a new online teaching game, the FloraPark simulation (“the flower game” at https://flower.gamespots.net/), based on real-life events in the international fresh-cut flower supply chains, for students to learn supply chain collaboration via contracts in a setting of multiple supply chains competing in the same market. Students play trading partners in the flower supply chains and experiment with the push, pull, and advanced purchasing discount contracts by negotiating wholesale prices and quantities to achieve the conflicting objectives of (1) collaboration to beat other supply chains, and (2) bargaining to protect their own interests from their trading partners.