Tag: Case competition

I am very proud to announce that our Olin team brought home top prizes from the 18th International Case Competition sponsored by the Operations Management Club at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University.

Team members: Chase Huey, Saurabh Singh, Prasanna Shrivastava, Austin Murray and Qu Jiang (MS-SCM), won First Place in the prestigious competition ($5,000) and the Best Presentation Award ($2,500)!

It is particularly gratifying to sweep these awards at Dean Gupta’s alma mater – I am sure he is doubly proud of that.

Top-tier business schools from all over the United States and abroad are invited every fall to compete in the two-day operations case competition. Teams work in small groups under strict timelines to solve a business case that highlights multinational corporations’ real-world operational issues. The teams then present their strategies to a panel of industry and academic experts in the field of operations management.

Corporate sponsors of the competition were Eaton, Emerson, and Boeing.

Only 12 teams from 12 schools are chosen to participate. Here is the list of the outstanding competitor schools in this year’s competition:

• Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley
• Indian School of Business, India
• Ivey Business School, Western University, Canada
• Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
• Krannert School of Management, Purdue University
• Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California
• McCombs School of Business, University of Texas
• MIT Sloan School of Business
• NYU Stern School of Business
• Olin Business School, Washington University
• Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt university
• Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University
• Yale School of Management

My name is Alexander Faught.  I am a first year MBA, and this is my first Olin blog post.  I would like to use this opportunity to write about my Mini-A session (Olin’s quarter system equivalent).

MBA and SMP students on the Omaha, Nebraska trip to meet with Warren Buffett.

The six-week period was action packed both inside and outside of the classroom.  Some of the highlights included:

– Participating in case discussions analyzing the accounting, economic, and financial principles behind various events involving Berkshire Hathaway, Brown-Forman, GE, Gillette, Marriott, and Nintendo (among others);

-Creating models and running simulations on airline reservations and pricing, option values, mortgage decisions, and optimal plant production;

-Attending a guest corporate finance lecture given by two Monsanto M&A experts, focusing on the practical application of valuation theory (specifically regarding industry discounted cash flow techniques);

-Visiting Berkshire Hathaway’s headquarters, touring some of its portfolio business, and meeting Warren Buffett on an Olin-sponsored trip to Omaha, NE (yes, I shook the Oracle’s hand!);

-Entering my first case competition, and valuing a private business through the ACG Cup; and

-Interviewing with several firms and finding the right match for this upcoming summer (interning in an investment research capacity).

Although it is hard to imagine a better session, I am sure the next six weeks will render many more noteworthy experiences…

Finance photo by Tax Credits on Flickr

After a year of planning, last Friday afternoon we celebrated the final presentations of the Olin Sustainability Case Competition (OSCC)!  This was the fourth year of the competition, which began as a way to increase awareness about sustainability as it relates to business practices.

This year, we had more than 20 teams express interest in the competition. The case topic was “Blight, Plight, and Urban Flight: Stimulating the Sustainable Development of Vacant Land in the City of St. Louis.” For the first year ever, the case writers decided to take the case off-campus and work with administrators from the City of St. Louis to develop a case that would produce implementable ideas to reduce the amount of vacant land around our city.

After weeks of reviewing submissions, the committee narrowed it down to our final three teams. These teams presented their ideas to a room of about 100 people, including our corporate sponsors from Novus and Tarlton, as well as a prestigious judging panel made up of administrators from around the Washington University campus and the City of St. Louis.

At the end of the day, Team 4 and Team 13 tied for first place and each team won $4,000!

Team 4: Watch Team 4’s Video Submission
Brian Arnold, MS in Finance 2013
Deona DeClue, Juris Doctor 2013
Cody Greer, PhD Neuroscience 2017
Benjamin Mueller, MS Construction Management 2015

Team 13: Watch Team 13’s Video Submission
Megan Berry, Master of Architecture 2014
Grace Goldstein, Master of Architecture 2015
Grant McCracken, BA Architecture and English Literature 2014

And Team 8 came in as our runners-up winning a prize of $2,000!

Team 8: Watch Team 8’s Video Submission
Steven Boughton, MBA 2014
Daniela Pacurar, MBA 2014
John (Turner) Peters, MBA 2014

Be on the look-out for the Fifth Annual Olin Sustainability Case Competition next year!  In the meantime, be sure to congratulate our 2013 winning teams!

Two Olin undergraduate teams were finalists in the 2nd Annual Midwest Diversity Case Competition hosted by the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University in mid-January.

Members of the newly created student organization, Arch Consulting, sent teams to the competition in Bloomington and they came home with third and fourth place finishes that included awards of $2,500 and $1,700, respectively. The first place prize was $7,000 out of a prize purse totaling $20,000.

24 teams from 16 distinguished universities participated in the competition. The competition is designed to educate students about the importance of diversity in business and showcases talented, under-represented, minority students. The competition was created and organized by the Kelley Student Diversity Council.

In addition to the mission of diversity, the case competition serves as a recruiting platform for corporate sponsors including Target, Ernst & Young, General Electric, General Mills, Whirlpool, Huron Consulting Group, Allstate, Xerox, KPMG, and Google.

Arch Consulting is Olin’s traveling case competition group and hopes to continue to grow and excel at case competitions such as these.

This academic year Arch Consulting will also compete at Northeastern University, Georgetown, USC, and the U of Pittsburgh. Arch Consulting teams also enter Olin and on-campus case competitions.