Supply Chain and Operations management, played
Learn operations by running the system, not just reading about it.
Short, replayable browser games that drop you inside the decisions operations managers actually face: demand swings, lead times, capacity limits, quality signals and the real cost of getting the call wrong.
The games
Each one isolates a core operations concept. Search by topic or filter by area to find one.
For teaching
Free for educators, and it stays free
Operations Lab is not a product. It is a platform offered free of charge to educators and students: no account, no install, nothing to license, and no data leaves the browser. Share a link and the room is playing inside a minute. Use one game as a ten-minute opener, or run a sequence across a module.
Missing a concept? If your course needs an idea the collection does not cover yet, I will research it, build it, test it and put it live, typically within about five days, at no cost to educators or students.
-
01
One concept per gameEach game isolates a single idea, so it drops into the lecture that covers it rather than needing a slot of its own.
-
02
Scored against the optimum, not against luckEvery game grades decision quality on the same demand, so a good call that got an unlucky outcome still scores well.
-
03
The debrief is the lessonEach run ends by naming the principle and showing the student their own decisions against the benchmark.
-
04
Grounded in a real curriculumThe set is mapped to an operations and supply chain syllabus, so it lines up with what is already being taught.
About
Operations Lab is a growing collection of small, self-contained games for learning operations management. Each one strips a single idea down to the decision at its heart, lets you make that decision under pressure, then shows you what it cost. The premise is simple: some concepts are far easier to feel than to memorise.
Everything runs in your browser. There is nothing to install, no account to create, and no data leaves your device. Every game keeps your best score locally, scores your play against the textbook optimum rather than against luck, and ends with a short debrief that names the principle you just met. The games are built for university teaching and grounded in a real operations curriculum, but anyone curious about how operations behave is welcome.
As the collection grows, use the search box to jump to a topic or technique, or the topic filters to browse one area at a time. That is handy when a course moves from inventory to quality to flow. Each game is tagged by area:
- Supply chain: the bullwhip effect, lead times, echelons
- Inventory: how much to stock, and when to order
- Planning: matching production to demand over time
- Quality: process control, signal versus noise
- Lean & flow: bottlenecks, waste, lead time
- Strategy: network and facility design
- Services: queues, waiting lines and staffing
- Revenue: pricing and selling perishable capacity
- Projects: scheduling and the critical path
The capstone project Coming soon
AFTERSHOCK
A disaster-response supply chain project
Not an introductory game. A large-scale project: lead the relief operation after an earthquake in the fictitious Republic of Valdara, across five stages where every early decision quietly opens or closes your options later. There is no single right answer. You are judged on a trade-off of coverage, responsiveness, resilience, cost and efficiency, all at once.
Coming soon