Each inventory contains 12 cases and initial throughput is four cases per week. In the first few weeks of the game the players learn the mechanics of filling orders, recording inventory, etc. During this time customer demand remains constant at four cases per week, and each player is directed to order four cases, maintaining the equilibrium. Players are told the game will run for 50 simulated weeks, but play is actually halted after 36 weeks to avoid horizon effects. Each player has good local information but severely limited global information.
Players keep records of their inventory, backlog and orders placed with their supplier each week.
Customer demand is not known to any of the players in advance. Only the retailers discover customer demand as the game proceeds. The others learn only what their own customer orders. These information limitations imply that the players are unable to coordinate their decisions or jointly plan strategy, even though the objective of each team is to minimize total costs. As in many real life settings, the global optimization problem must be factored into subproblems distributed throughout the organization.