THE MENTOR GAME: Production Planning and Stock Control in Manufacturing Industry

The introduction of a new computerised order processing system at Glaxo Pharmaceuticals made an enormous amount of production data available to the users of on‐line computer systems. To understand and act on this data effectively, it became increasingly evident that a wider understanding of production processes was needed at both a practical and conceptual level. To meet this training need, the MENTOR game was developed in‐house to train staff in the theory and practice of production planning, stock control and materials explosion in a manufacturing environment. The game has also been run with pre‐university school groups in liaison with local and central government educational agencies.