DISASTER: Blockchain-Enabled Token Trading Game for Supply Chain Management

Abstract

This paper describes the blockchain-enabled token trading game for supply chain management, a web-based supply chain simulation. The game uses blockchain technology’s concepts to create virtual markets for supplier capacity trading among retailers, in which participants take on the role of a retailer, have different valuations for products, and submit an order before knowing their demand; after demand realization, participants trade tokens (claims on the supplier’s capacity) among themselves using virtual markets to maximize their profits. The game provides participants with firsthand experience with how blockchain technology can be used in practice, thus serving as an interactive pedagogical tool. More generally, the game is intended to help supply chain management and blockchain technology students and executives understand the challenges of serving uncertain customer demand and the role of virtual markets in providing an effective remedy for reconciling supply and demand, thus improving supply chain performance. Supplemental Material: The supplemental material is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/ited.2023.0015 . The Teaching Note and PowerPoint presentation are available at https://www.informs.org/Publications/Subscribe/Access-Restricted-Materials .