Changelog

The bullwhip chart (Orders vs. Final Demand) in the Beer Game debriefing shows the orders of each role (typically retailer, wholesaler, distributor, manufacturer) — against the final customer demand.

You can now reveal the roles one at a time, making it easier to show how the variability is amplified and delayed as you move up the chain.

Build it up, step by step

You can start by clicking Play, or show roles at your own pace.

Start by clicking Final Demand to show only the customer demand — stable apart from a single step up (4 → 8) near the start. Then use the chevrons or the left/right keys to add each role in turn: the retailer's orders, then the wholesaler's, the distributor's, and finally the manufacturer's.

Each step lets you pause and explain what's happening before the next line appears, so the amplification builds in front of your participants instead of landing all at once. The chart even rescales as you go, giving each new peak room to breathe.

Prefer a hands-off reveal? Click Play and the roles appear one by one automatically — pause anytime, or take over with the chevrons.

In a real production line/cell, workers aren't locked to one station. When a bottleneck builds up, they move to where the work is piling up and help clear it, keeping the whole line flowing.

You can now bring that to the Lean Game. From now on, by default, players can only process operations on their own station. But with the Flexible Workforce improvement unlocked, players can go and help a teammate whose station is falling behind.

Reading the line

When stations are located next to each other (following a workshop layout), players can see their neighbouring stations on the left and right of their interface, with a "To do" count showing how much work is waiting at that station.

Going to help

When a neighbour needs help, a Help button appears prominently on their panel. One click moves the player into that station, where they can process its products exactly as they would their own.

While helping elsewhere, a banner keeps it clear that the player is away from their own post, with a one-click way to return.

Why it matters

With Flexible Workforce, players have to read the whole line, and decide when it's worth leaving. Exactly the trade-offs Shojinka is about. It pairs naturally with Balance workload: one rebalances the line on paper, the other lets the team rebalance it in real time.

Read more about the improvement here: 

https://docs.zensimu.com/article/57-lean-tool-flexible-workforce-shojinka

Setting up a multi-round supply chain simulation often means entering the same value over and over. The same lead time at every site, across all rounds, typed in one by one.

Not anymore. Bulk update lets you set any parameter to a specific value everywhere at once.

From the Quick updates section of your session or template settings, open Bulk update:

Then:

• Pick which rounds and sites the change applies to (everything is selected by default),

• Choose the parameter: lead time, starting stock, costs, and so on,

• Set the value, and hit Update all.

That's it. The value is applied across every selected combination in one click, instead of dozens of manual edits.

Multi-product support

In sessions with more than one product, a Products selector appears too, letting you target the change by product as well as by round and site.

Don't forget to save

Like other session settings, a bulk update is applied to your working copy first. You can verify the setting was applied, then click Save session to make it permanent.

For Supply Chain / Beer Game simulations, you can already enable a timer, giving players a maximum duration to send their order.

This is very useful to ensure teams advance at a minimum pace. However, players sometimes had difficulty noticing the timer was active, or seeing what order the system had placed on their behalf when they ran out of time.

So we've redesigned the warning with a clearer popup message. The warning now appears in two stages as the timer counts down, with a progress bar showing time remaining:

• Yellow - 30 seconds left: players are prompted to “Submit their order". They still have a bit of time to think.

• Red - 10 seconds left: the toast turns red and now shows the exact auto-order quantity that will be placed players don't submit their order on time.

This two-stage approach preserves the decision-making pressure during the thinking window, then provides full transparency in the final seconds, so players can quickly override the system's default if needed.

Computer auto-play calculation

Want to learn more about how the computer calculates its order quantities? Read our detailed article here: https://docs.zensimu.com/article/32-computer-player-orders-calculation

Multi-product and multi-role support

In games with complex networks (e.g. bill of material scenarios, or players controlling multiple roles), each product/role appears in its own pill with its computed quantity, during the final 10 seconds:

We've added a Financial Recap to Supply Chain simulation debriefings, and a new Waterfall view to the Lean Game's existing Financial Statement.

Supply Chain: Financial Recap

Supply Chain game debriefings now include a full P&L breakdown showing revenue and costs — with drill-down by product and by site.

On the player debriefing page, the Financial Recap can be displayed with two views side by side: a waterfall chart showing the P&L shape at a glance, and a detailed table. Each row is expandable by product (Ex: Tennis Ball, Basket Ball…), then by site (Retailer, Factory…).

The Financial Recap also appears on the Session Results page, so instructors can compare the financial profile of all teams. Switch between Waterfall and Table view depending on whether you want pattern recognition or precise numbers.

The waterfall makes it easy to spot at a glance which teams had a revenue problem vs. a cost problem — and whether their costs were driven by overstocking, backorders, or other.

How to activate

The new player/session financial views are only active when you have Revenue setup in a game (via unit prices at a site). You can toggle them via the Debriefing settings:

Lean Game: Waterfall view

The Lean Game's Financial Statement now supports a Waterfall view alongside the existing table.

The waterfall is especially useful when comparing many teams/rounds — the shape of each chart tells the story before you read any numbers. A team with a tall WIP Inventory bar has a very different problem than one with a tall Rework bar, even if their bottom lines are similar.

Don't know exactly how many participants will show up? You no longer need to guess the right number of teams when creating a session.

With Auto-expand teams enabled, new teams are automatically added when all existing spots are filled. Just set a starting number of teams and let the session grow as players join.

This is especially useful for:

• Large workshops or conferences where attendance is uncertain,

• Open/Asynchronous sessions where participants join at their own pace,

• Any situation where you'd rather not manually add teams mid-session.

How to enable it:

Toggle the Auto-expand teams checkbox when creating a new session, or in the session settings:

How it works in the lobby:

When all positions are taken, a new team is automatically created so the next player always has a spot. The session adapts to your actual group size — no manual intervention needed.

With auto-assigned roles:

When the session lobby is set to auto-assign roles (advanced session settings), players see a single "Join the session" button instead of choosing a team and role. This is transparent for the player — additional teams are added on the fly and players are assigned to the newly created team.

Asynchronous single-player games template

If you want to play using this auto-expand setting in a single-player / asynchronous format, we propose a Beer Game template with the corresponding settings:

You can now more easily filter-out unwanted games from the session results and session responses (in case of post-game questions).

This can be for example to:

• Remove one or several teams that were played by bots,

• Remove an eventual first test round placed at the beginning of the session that shouldn’t be compared with others,

• Filter-out a team that had very different results, messing with the charts scale.

You can now optionally display an automatically-generated Value Stream Map (VSM) on the player debriefing page and in the session results.

The VSM is built from each round's actual game data, and its symbols adapt to reflect the improvements applied. For example, when Kanban is activated, supermarkets and pull arrows replace inventory triangles and push arrows.

To show the VSM in the player debriefing, enable it in the round settings:

You can also display all VSMs side by side on the Session Results page by adding it in the Session KPIs & Charts settings:

Let us know what you think of this update, especially if you'd like to see additional VSM symbols or data in future iterations!