The Appointment Scheduling Game (ASG) is an easy to use teaching tool that reveals the challenges in managing advance patient scheduling systems and provides an introduction to simulation and decision analysis.

ASG simulates a system in which daily patient appointment requests, which are characterized by their urgency level, arrive randomly. Daily service capacity is limited. Students playing the game assume the role of a scheduling clerk who must assign appointment dates to these requests without knowing future demand. While the game is primarily aimed at undergraduate and graduate operations students, it can also be used to introduce a range of dynamic programming concepts to advanced operations research students.

Instructors can...

  • Create and simulate multiple system settings
  • Set common random patient arrivals
  • Evaluate the performance of alternative patient scheduling strategies
  • Review and compare the performance of students

Students can...

  • Play any number of instructor-defined games
  • View scheduling performance metrics, such as service levels and average patient wait times
  • Review and compare past games to discover better scheduling strategies