Foster MSCM Students Finish 2nd at Neeley School of Business Invitational Supply Chain Case Competition
MSCM students Allegra Campbell, Everett Rebstock, Tanuj Choudhary, Catherine Ng
On February 23, a team of MSCM students won second place at the third annual TCU Neeley School of Business Invitational MBA/MS Supply Chain Competition! The competition, sponsored by international supplier of geographic information system software ESRI, was held at Texas Christian University in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex.
Foster’s MSCM program team was comprised of students Allegra Campbell, Tanuj Choudhary, Catherine Ng, and Everett Rebstock, who competed against some 60 students from the best and brightest MBA and MS programs around the country!
“The competition gets better every year. We’re seeing some of the best and brightest supply chain graduate students in the country demonstrate cutting-edge knowledge,” said Morgan Swink, Executive Director of the Center for Supply Chain Innovation at the TCU Neeley School of Business.
The event spanned three days. On Thursday, students flew in and attended a welcome dinner and cocktail reception with senior executives from sponsor companies and the advisory board. The next day, our highly-motivated team applied their knowledge, creativity and experience to a current supply chain challenge they were given.
Team member Allegra Campbell shared insights into her team’s approach to the case: “We were able to accurately guess the topic before arriving: distribution network design. Much of what we learned in Global Supply Chain (SCM 532) was applicable to solving this type of problem. An additional challenge was to use software we had never seen before, ESRI’s ArcGIS, Business Analyst, and Tapestry tools. My favorite of these was Tapestry, a tool for examining the demographic characteristics of a region.”
Saturday, the team put the final touches on their work and presented their solution to the panel of judges before attending the award ceremony and celebratory dinner with the judges, sponsor company executives, faculty members and the other teams. Judges include senior executives and talent acquisition team members from the TCU Business Community, including sponsor companies.
We are delighted and proud that the MSCM team received 2nd place out of 15 teams of four full-time MBA/MS students. As a reward for the effort, time and hard work they put into the competition, the team received a $5,000 prize.
Allegra stressed the importance of utilizing teamwork and individual strengths to their advantage to come up with a truly innovative solution to the challenge they were presented with: “I am very proud of our performance at the competition. Everyone had a distinct and important role that contributed to our success. I think we differentiated ourselves from the other teams by presenting creative solutions, using sound models for forecasting and financial analysis, and building on a strong research foundation. Our unique talents combined to create a final product better than any of us could have created alone.”
For more information about the competition and teams, visit the TCU website.
Written by Agathe Govare, MSc.
MSCM Social Media Manager
[email protected]
