Beer Game

Biological Parallel

MIT's Beer Game demonstrates how delays and lack of system visibility create wild oscillations in supply chains. Ant colonies face the same challenge: foragers find food, return to nest, recruit more ants, but recruitment takes time. If recruitment is too aggressive relative to food availability, the colony over-commits to depleted patches. Ants solve this with pheromone decay rates—trails fade at speeds calibrated to resource renewal, preventing the oscillations that plague human supply chains.