Games in Operations Management

Learning has become a constant state of mind for most professionals in today's organizations. However, to become a true learning enterprise, organizations cannot stop at instilling this yearning for knowledge into their collaborators. They must also capture and formalize the common know-how of the organization, as well as provide time and infrastructure to allow learning moments to happen. The aim of the Gaming Workgroup within IFIP 5.7 on Integrated Production Management Systems and the European Group of University Teachers for Industrial Management EHTB is to develop tools and formalisms to support experimental learning in these organizations. It has been proven that modelling the know-how, using visual environments such as multimedia and graphic simulations, is a first step. This in turn allows for the development of games, i.e. challenging settings that foster group interaction and problem solving.

Games in Operations Management provides an excellent overview of the different game formats that have been developed and tested in past years, and includes games in a manufacturing environment, games in a services environment, and games for teaching organizational values. The book comprises the selected, revised proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Games in Production Management: Experimental Learning in Industrial Management, which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held in November, 1998, in Ghent, Belgium.

The book will be of particular interest to organizational trainers, providing a good overview of state-of-the-art game and training formats as well as hints and advice on how to organize interactive training sessions. It will also be of interest to researchers in industrial engineering, industrial management, and operations management.