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Supply Chain Frontiers issue #51

A team of students from the MIT SCALE Network’s four supply chain management graduate programs took first place at the finals of the 5th annual Global Challenge of The Fresh Connection, a supply chain simulation competition designed to engage participants in making strategic and tactical decisions with the goal of improving the financial performance of a fictional company.

The winning team, named the "MIT Scalers," consisted of the following members:
  • Gustavo Escudero, Graduate Certificate in Logistics and Supply Chain Management student from the Center for Latin-American Logistics Innovation (Bogotá, Colombia)
  • Nadya Petrova, Supply Chain Management master’s student from MIT (Cambridge, MA, USA)
  • Richard Swapp, Logistics and Supply Chain Management master’s student from the Zaragoza Logistics Center (Zaragoza, Spain)
  • Sagar Neel De, Supply Chain Management master’s student from the Malaysia Institute for Supply Chain Innovation (Shah Alam, Malaysia)
After four stages of selection, eight teams took part in the finals, which were held in Istanbul, Turkey on September 24, 2013. After 12 rounds, the MIT Scalers achieved a weighted return on investment (ROI) of 47.8%, almost 4% higher than first runner-up team from Bosch und Siemens Hausgeräte in Germany, and 5% higher than the second runner-up team from Fuji Xerox in Australia.
  More than 1,300 participants from 25 countries formed over 300 teams in this year’s competition, which was organized by Involvation Interactive, creators of The Fresh Connection simulation program. This year’s Global Challenge focused on supply chain risk management and featured new scenario planning tools to address various types of risk events such as natural disasters, strikes, supplier disruptions, theft, quality issues, and high market volatility.

In a separate competition held earlier this year, another MIT SCALE student team, led by MIT Supply Chain Management master’s students Andrew Bignell and Derik Smith, took first place in the finals of The Fresh Connection Student Competition, which were hosted in Paris, France on May 25, 2013. The team competed against the top seven teams from France and Germany. After three rounds, the MIT SCALE team achieved an ROI of 11.89%, followed by ESSEC Business School with 9.18%, and Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg with 8.97%. The Fresh Connection Student Competition was organized by the Production Management Institute (Germany) and FAPICS (France).