LFM/MIT
Sloan Team Places First in Carnegie
Mellon Operations Case Competition
Win
marks third year winning top award
By
Lois
Slavin, Communications Director,
MIT Engineering Systems Division – November
27, 2007
A
team of LFM and MIT Sloan MBA students
took first place at Carnegie Mellon
University’s 12th Annual International
Operations Case Study Competition,
held in Pittsburgh, PA on November
9-10, 2007. Members included LFM ‘09s
David Larson, Pete Frys, and Laurel
Hoffman, and MIT Sloan ’09 MBAs
Mike Beaser and Steve Rulison.
This
marks the third year that the MIT
team, which has always included LFM
has won first place. Others include
the 2000
team, which tied for first place,
and those in 2003.
Another team with LFM members took
second place in 2001.
The
2007 competition was sponsored by
Amazon.com, Honeywell, Cooper, Eaton,
Graham Packaging Company, and Union
Pacific Building America and managed
by the Operations Management Club
at CMU’s Tepper School of Business.
Over a dozen top-tier schools from
around the world competed for a cash
prize of 10 thousand dollars.
For
the approximately 12 or so MIT students
who aspired to enter, the competition
started two weeks before the actual
CMU event, when a "case-off"
- a mini-competition -- was held to
determine which five would represent
MIT.
"One
of the judges told me that they chose
the most talkative students,"
recalled Larson. "Their reasoning
was if you’re not talking, you’re
not helping."
After
winning the case-off, Larson and his
team members prepared for the real
thing by presenting a practice case
to Don Rosenfield, director of the
LFM Fellows Program, and members of
the MIT Sloan Operations Club who
gave invaluable feedback. Larson added
that because the LFMs had not worked
with the Sloan MBAs previously, "it
was a good opportunity to bond, develop
a presentation template, set up a
timeline, and work out any bugs ahead
of time."
With
financial support from the faculty
of the operations management group
at MIT Sloan, the team flew to Pittsburgh
on November 9th for the competition.
It began with a full evening of networking,
a panel discussion on the lean supply
chain, and a presentation on the actual
assignment.
The
case involved Amazon.com’s U.S.
operations. Amazon.com’s Tom
Taylor, LFM ’91, gave a presentation
outlining the case challenge: designing
a fulfillment strategy for delivering
a new line of business distributing
kitchen utensils manufactured by small
companies to both individual and large
retail buyers.
Each
team then broke out into individual
rooms and worked from 7pm to midnight
on a presentation. "On the airplane,
Mike sat next to a 4th grade girl
and told her why we were going to
Pittsburgh. She drew us good luck
pictures that we posted on the walls
for encouragement as we worked on
our presentation."
They
addressed issues such as where Amazon
could grow its business-to-business
warehouse and distribution centers
and whether they should use existing
resources or build new ones.
"Our
team decided to suggest constructing
new centers right next to existing
ones, in order to leverage the same
management, labor, and transportation
resources," said Larson. All
of the teams were required to submit
their presentations at midnight, but
the MIT team didn’t get to sleep
until 2am, after running through a
couple of practice presentations back
at their hotel.
The
next morning, each team made a private
presentation to a judging panel, followed
by a Q&A session. Four semi-finalist
teams were announced at lunch, among
them the group from LFM/MIT Sloan.
"One
of the judges had grilled us on the
fact that we had not included an ROI
analysis on lease vs. build,"
said Larson. "Although we couldn’t
include it in our PowerPoint slides,
which we’d finalized the night
before, we made sure to discuss it
in our final presentation. After all,
the LFMs are engineers, which means
we can’t leave questions unanswered!"
The
result? First place and a $10 thousand
prize.
Larson
believes there were several factors
that helped the team win. Among them:
excellent operations coursework by
Professors Sebastian Fixson and Jeremie
Gallien and valuable coaching by LFM
’05 Ronak Shah, a member of
the LFM/MIT Sloan team that took first
place in the competition in 2003.
He advised, for example, that they
focus on strategy, value chain, and
economics, smooth delivery balanced
equally among the team members, and
lots of pictures.
"The
LFM network provided important insights
and suggestions. In a similar spirit,
we’d love to support LFMs in
next year’s competition,"
said Larson.
Left
to right: Peter Frys, LFM ’09;
Steve Rulison, MBA ’09;
David Larson and Laurel Hoffman,
LFM ’09; and
Michael Beaser, MBA ‘09.
Photo courtesy
of The Tepper School of Business.
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