Beer Distribution

Beer Distribution Chain Alternate Assignment

Clemson University

MBAe851 Spring 2015

Liddle

Background:

The exercise in class is a simulated beer supply chain. There is a manufacturer, distributor, wholesaler and retailer that has demand from end customers. One of the primary goals of the simulation is to understand how communication between these various functions can affect the efficiency of supply chain process.

Distributor

Distributor

Wholesaler

Wholesaler

Retailer

Retailer

End Customer

End Customer

Beer Manufacturer

Beer Manufacturer

Alternate Assignment:

As an alternate to participating in this simulation in class please do the following for your proposed business or for the business where you currently work: Write a summary of how product gets from the manufacturer to the end user. I recommend a flow chart here similar to above. Where does your business fall in the supply chain? (If you are a service company do this for some significant product that you use.) How do the various people in the supply chain know what is happening with demand that is down stream and how do they communicate their demand up stream? (Is this only through the use of purchase orders to suppliers or some other means?) Does anyone in the supply chain use other means of looking at downstream customer demand like industry data to determine what their demand will be?

Expectations:

We will spend about 2 hours in class on the simulation in class so I would expect you to spend a similar amount of time on this. Please do this in a Microsoft Word document and put your last name at the beginning of the file that you turn in. Hopefully, it will be of value for you to do a little research on your supply chain and your supply chain communication methods. Good Luck!