Premier Print Co.
Logistics
Run the supply chain of a household 3D printer manufacturer and compete, quarter after quarter, across five international markets. The mission: keep the goods moving without breaking the cash flow.
An operations control room, turned into a competitive game
Premier Print Co. Logistics is a real-time supply chain and operations simulation. Each team runs a company that manufactures and distributes a household 3D printer, and every quarter takes decisions on purchasing, manufacturing, warehousing, transport, sales and finance. Each team's outcome depends on what all the competitors do.
The full supply chain
From sourcing raw materials to the sale at the retailer: manufacturing, warehousing and moving the goods across five countries, balancing cost, lead time and service level.
Real-time multiplayer
Simultaneous quarterly decisions that resolve once everyone confirms. Demand, prices and share are split between the companies according to what each one decides.
Data-driven debriefing
A unified results dashboard compares every team quarter by quarter. The real learning arrives when the group reconstructs why the winner won.
Premier Print Co. and the 3D printer that wants a place in every home
Premier Print Co. manufactures a groundbreaking household 3D printer. It buys raw materials, turns them into printers —and into 3D printed toys— and takes them to the end customer through retailers. The challenge: do it better than the competition in a market that shifts every quarter.
You are the executive committee
Participants are not an anonymous player: they form the company's executive committee. At the start of each quarter they set the plan —what to produce, where, how to ship it and at what price— and then live with the consequences when the market responds.
Nobody sets a fair reference price: every decision a team makes changes the board for the others. Planning and continuous forecasting are the only real advantage.
The metric that rules: free cash flow
Winning is not just selling more. It is generating free cash flow while sustaining the operation: keeping the goods moving without breaking the treasury.
Three product categories
Raw materials feed the factory; the factory produces printers and toys that travel to the five markets.
Five markets, one network to design
Premier Print Co. starts from its Central market and can expand into four neighbouring countries —North, South, East and West—. Each has its own demand, its own price sensitivity, its own retailer mix… and its own cost of manufacturing there.
Illustrative diagram. The instructor decides which markets are open and at what demand levels; each country's attributes are configurable.
The logistics director's dilemma
Every new market opens up share, but dilutes margin: warehouses have to be sized, routes chosen and the cost of serving further away absorbed. The big strategic question of the game is profitable regional leadership or broad leadership on a thin margin.
And because manufacturing costs differ by country, deciding where to produce matters as much as deciding how much.
Cost to serve
Every extra market adds revenue, but it also adds logistics cost. Real profitability only appears once you subtract what it costs to get there.
Five seats on the executive committee
Each team, of 3 to 5 participants, shares out the executive committee roles. Each role has its own lever and its own tension, and they all share a single result.
CEO
Runs the company and answers for the result. Sets the direction and signs off the big investment bets.
CFO
Manages the money: when to take loans and on what terms, what to do with profits and how much cash cushion to keep.
COO
Decides how the product is made and how much is produced each round, how much inventory to hold and when to pay for urgency.
Logistics director
Decides which markets the company is in, where the warehouses go and how the goods move when speed matters.
CMO
Decides how demand is captured and at what price. Sets prices by region, defines brand presence and reads the competition.
Indicative roles for university programmes. In small teams one person can hold several; the committee decides together.
What participants take away
Premier Print Co. Logistics trains operations and supply chain management through experience rather than theory: under competitive pressure and with (virtual) money on the line.
Deciding under uncertainty
Making critical decisions with incomplete information and with competitors on the move, against one clear objective: generating free cash flow.
Managing a complex chain
Sourcing raw materials, manufacturing, warehousing and selling, coordinating every link of an international supply chain.
Expanding and competing
Navigating five distinct countries —each with its own demand, price sensitivity and retailers— deciding where and when to enter.
Working as a team, live
Running the company in direct competition with other teams and in real time, balancing internal collaboration with market rivalry.
Ideal audience: graduate and doctoral programmes in operations and supply chain, MBA, executive education and corporate programmes for operations teams.
Six levers, one integrated decision every quarter
At the start of each quarter, the committee sets its decisions across six functional areas. They are not isolated modules: a badly sized purchase is paid for in manufacturing, drags on into the warehouse and shows up in the cash position. Everything is connected.
Executive summary
A panoramic view to benchmark your company against the competition at a glance, quarter after quarter.
Procurement
Select suppliers by cost, lead time and order quantity. The first domino of the whole chain.
Manufacturing
Set production levels, bearing in mind that the cost of manufacturing differs in every country.
Logistics and warehousing
Size the warehouse space and orchestrate shipments between countries by truck, train and ship, balancing cost against lead time.
Retail strategy
Set the trade marketing investments that attract customers and sell through different retailers, and manage the sales force.
Finance monitoring
Track every cash inflow and outflow in detail, decide loans and terms, and keep cash flow in the green.
Decisions at the start, consequences all quarter long
Decisions are locked at the start of the period and condition everything that follows. Once the quarter closes, results are computed from the decisions of all companies at once.
The journey of the goods
Every printer travels the full chain before it generates a single euro of cash. At each link there is a decision —and a cost— that the committee controls.
Procurement
Suppliers by cost, lead time and quantity
Manufacturing
Production at a different cost per country
Warehousing
Sizing the available space
Transport
Truck · train · ship
Sales
Retailers through to the end customer
The transport triangle
Three ways to move the goods between countries. None wins on everything: choosing means giving something up.
The transport triangle
Route Central → North
Illustrative values of the cost, lead time and capacity trade-off. The available routes and transport providers are defined by the scenario.
How you win: from the sale to the cash
The scoreboard is not revenue, it is free cash flow. Selling a lot counts for little if the product, the logistics and the interest eat the margin. This is the waterfall the finance seat watches every quarter.
Result waterfall (typical quarter)
From the revenue of the five markets through to free cash flow. Illustrative figures, in thousands.
Financing
Short and long term loans, each with its rate and its term; interest-bearing deposits for idle cash, and the decision to reinvest or distribute profits.
Cost to serve
Every extra market adds revenue, but it also adds logistics cost. Real profitability only appears once you subtract what it costs to get there.
Investment decision (NPV)
Optionally, the instructor introduces a capital budgeting decision: appraising a project by discounting its cash flows at the cost of capital. Invest, delay or drop it.
The financial engine is configurable: interest rates, credit limits, scoreboard weights and finance mode are set per scenario from the instructor dashboard.
The journey of each quarter
A simple web interface, with no installation, that guides the team round by round. The same cycle repeats every quarter, gaining depth as the market shifts.
Market analysis
Assess demand, competitor presence and entry costs for each potential market.
Network design
Decide which markets to serve, where to place the warehouses and how to size capacity.
Shipment planning
Plan the flow from production through to the markets, balancing speed against cost.
Execution and monitoring
Confirm the decisions. The quarter closes once everyone confirms and the results are computed.
Refining the strategy
Use the market response and the financial results to reallocate resources and improve margins.
Final optimisation
Final adjustments to maximise profitability and position before the game closes.
Simultaneous resolution
Nobody advances on their own: the quarter only resolves once every team has confirmed. Then the engine cross-checks all the decisions and allocates demand, share and results.
A dashboard to run the game
Instructors control the pace and the pressure: they can inject market events in any round and adjust the scenario without touching a line of code.
Market events injected round by round
By region
A shock that hits one specific market rather than all of them equally.
In the round you choose
Schedule when the event happens to raise the pressure at the key moment.
Severity 1–100
An intensity dial: from a small tremor to a jolt that changes everything.
Visible or hidden
You decide whether students see the event coming or discover it once it has already hit.
The scenario, tailored to you
Parameter panel
Scenario presets, interest rates, cost of capital and scoreboard weights, all from the instructor dashboard.
Markets and demand
Which countries are open, and with what demand levels and price sensitivity.
Rounds and duration
Set the number of quarters to fit the game into one session or spread it across several classes.
Bots to fill teams
Fill any missing teams with bots so the competitive board is always full.
Visible or hidden results
Show or hide the ranking to control how much information the teams have.
Pre-loaded historical data
Previous rounds already played, so the game starts with context and gets going faster.
Where the game turns into learning
After playing, instructors open a unified results dashboard with every team's decisions and results, quarter by quarter. With everything in view, the group reconstructs why the winner won — and why the company that sold the most is not always the one that generated the most cash.
Cumulative free cash flow by company
The chart that opens the debate: four strategies, four trajectories. Illustrative data.
Illustrative trajectory: the team leading on share at mid-game can watch the cost of serving so many markets eat its cash.
In summary
Archimedes LMS platform · an Eureka Simulations product
Answers to the most common questions
It is a logistics and supply chain simulation in which participants run the operations of Premier Print Co., a household 3D printer manufacturer, competing against other teams across five international markets.
A full game usually runs between 3 and 8 hours, depending on the number of quarters and on whether it is played in a single session or spread across several classes.
It is played in teams of 3 to 5 participants, who share the five seats on the executive committee. Any number of teams can compete at the same time: the more teams, the more dynamic the competitive environment.
The instructor decides which markets are open and with what demand, how many quarters the game lasts, the interest rates and the scoreboard weights. They can also inject market events, choosing the region, the round, the severity and whether they are visible or hidden.
When the game ends, instructors open a unified results dashboard with every team's decisions and results quarter by quarter, which supports a structured close on strategy, supply chain and competitive response.
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