Nestle’s Academy members reverse roles with Supply Chain Leadership Team

Six members of the Supply Chain Academy facilitated a social evening for the Supply Chain Leadership team at Nestle in York by leading a session to introduce senior managers and colleagues to the new Global Edition of Business on the Move.

Supported by Kaley Haskins in Supply Chain earlier this year, the co-creator of the game, Patricia Smedley, challenged Nestle’s Academy not only to learn how to play the game but also how to run it.

Kaley commented ‘Business on the Move is great, we had a lot of fun preparing for this event with fantastic support from Andy and Pat. I am excited to see how we are going to utilise this game across our Supply Chain.”

The Academy members seamlessly became ‘Bankers’ in charge of separate concurrent games, ensuring financial probity, procedural compliance and fair play! Furthermore, the Academy members assumed the responsibility for ‘road testing’ four brand new video clips designed to get players playing as quickly as possible along with some ‘newsflashes’ that introduced timely curve balls to the Leadership team.

A twilight session was arranged for March 13th where the Academy members put their Supply Chain Leadership Team through their paces, introducing and running the game to completion. Indeed, after ensuring players’ balance sheets were checked and signed off, Jane Fletcher was judged the winner and received an Ipad!

Pip Edgar, a Supply Chain Apprentice remarked “Business on the Move really sets the tone for training by providing the big picture of global supply chains in an enjoyable way.”

Subsequent discussion prompted lots of positive ideas for optimising the deployment of the games that Nestle has received as a Gold sponsor of Business on the Move.

Internally the most popular suggestions were to incorporate the game into the training of apprentices and wider supply chain colleagues. Other suggestions were ‘Team building days’, ‘Away Day’, ‘ Farm to Fork’ training course, ‘the KISS event’.

Externally Business on the Move was considered “a great way to encourage sixth form/college students to explore the opportunities within supply chain.”

Looking back on the session, Richard Hastings, Head of Logistics at Nestle, observed:

‘The BotM game was a great opportunity for our Supply Chain Academy members to gain exposure to the Supply Chain Leadership Team, the event was enjoyed thoroughly by both groups. It was great to see how enthused and engaged our Academy members were and we can’t wait to see the game use more widely across our business and Supply Chain’.

Watch this space!