What is a good peer response to this discussion post?

In the bullwhip simulation game, the first time I played it on easy, it took me until week 46 to reach equilibrium. I played it again, and managed to achieve the objective where supply perfectly meets demand in week 6. On expert mode, I was able to accomplish this in wk 18. My initial strategy was to overproduce, as that's the easiest and for me, the most realistic approach to ensuring that sales are maximized. Maybe that's a holdover from my experience in retail, where I'd rather have too much product than miss out on a single sale. But I soon realized in the game how this can compound production problems and had to dial back how many units I produced. My overall strategy was to keep as many units in my production que as were in the potential of orders to reach equilibrium.

Despite really complex systems available in modeling and forecasting, I think we see evidence of the bullwhip effect often. Although I think the real issues with the supply chain happen when people over react instead of relying on predictive modeling. But maybe that's the nature of the business beast - where failing to react to customer demands and product trends means a significant loss of revenue. In short, there's no incentive to be conservative in attempting to meet demand. One example that comes to mind is when fidget spinners became trendy. For a solid month once they appeared on social media, there were none to be found in my store. A week or so later, our first shippers of them arrived and they sold out. By the end of the next quarter, there was little demand for them and we had probably thousands that we clearanced just to sell through them.

Mitigating supply chain issues like the bullwhip can be complex because the causes can vary, and sometimes they can't be predicted or mitigated. I think our merchant buyers do a good job of trying to alleviate future problems when they are known, like when there is a forecasted shortage of tomatoes we see an influx of every product imaginable that's made with them despite having no current need for them. I think as a merchant or an operator, relying on sales analytics as a means of forecasting and developing relations with proven suppliers goes along way in preventing supply chain issues and overcomming unplanned situations.