Operations and technology management students sweep competition
(The Beacon)
By Rosemary Peters, Editor-in-Chief -- peters12@up.edu
In UP's first year attending the Association for Operations Management's West Coast Case Competition, six seniors dominated the competition and took home first place last weekend.
The team defeated 24 other graduate and undergraduate teams.
Katrina Ause, Matt Beverly, Lacey Hall, Taylor Jones, Chris Vennes and Sarah Klemsz were given a case study Friday morning in Van Nuys, Calif. Six hours later, they had written a two-page memo and presented an eight-minute debrief to the "manager" of the company advising on what needed to be done in order to fix their problem.
"The point is to promote operations management and introduce students to real-world case study problems, giving each team the chance to respond and test their knowledge and skills under pressure," Vennes, an operations and technology management major, said.
UP's case was about supply chains, referring specifically to a Humvee Trailer supply company that discovered its brake assembly manufactures went bankrupt once the company ran out of parts. Vennes and the rest of the team helped devise a strategy for the trailer company that would help them rebuild the supply chain and deliver the trailers to their customers on time.
"There were some constraints given, the rest you had to piece together from a 45-minute Q&A session with the case expert," Vennes said. "We were trying to solve the problem and produce a recommendation that would allow the company to complete its shipment in full by the end of the month."
The morning after their presentation on Friday, the group was told they were one of two teams out of the 12 undergraduate competitors who made it into the second round of the competition. The second round was held immediately after.
"It seemed liked a blur to me; they didn't tell you who advanced until they called you up the second day to present, so there was no time to be nervous, you just had to get up and present," Vennes said.
UP's group was the only team who managed to ship all trailers, completed, by the end of the month and create a long-term solution for the company.
"We really appreciate the Portland APICS chapter and Dr. Anderson, our dean, sponsoring us because without their help we probably wouldn't have been able to go and compete," Klemsz said. "It was a great learning experience for all of us and we are grateful we got to participate."
