MBAs Win Logistics Case Competition

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (March 3, 2006)—A team of MBA students from Penn State's Smeal College of Business took first place in a prestigious supply chain case competition for the third time in four years. This year's case challenged participants with a logistical problem that was seemingly pulled straight from recent news headlines.

The Smeal team of Sachin Arora, Erin Bauer, Andrew Davis, Mani Gokarnesan, Joe Mrozinski, and Robert Watson beat out teams from eight of the best supply chain schools in the world to win the Ninth Annual FedEx Freight International Graduate Logistics Case Competition, held Feb. 23-25 at the University of Arkansas.

Evoking images of the federal government's much-maligned response to Hurricane Katrina, each team was presented with this scenario: A major hurricane has struck Central America; what's the best way for the Red Cross to get the necessary relief to the disaster zone? The students had to lay out a plan for coordinating the efforts of governments, private aid groups, individual donors, and corporations, while arranging for the distribution of food, water, medical supplies, emergency equipment, and relief workers in the affected area.

The teams presented their solutions to a panel of industry judges, and the three finalists competed before a second group of judges in the championship round.

Smeal's team took about 19 straight hours to read the case, ask questions, develop a plan, create a presentation, and practice. Their solution was selected by the judges as the best, beating out teams from the University of Arkansas, Arizona State University, Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany, the University of Maryland, Michigan State University, the University of Minnesota, the Ohio State University, and the University of Wisconsin.

"Our critical thinking, non-groupthink dynamics, and ability to look at the big picture gave us the edge. Plus, there was incredible diversity on the team, with a marketing student and a finance student joining the four supply chain team members," says Arora.

Bauer says that diversity helped the team "to frame a more well-rounded strategy than the other teams and to touch on issues such as developing a marketing plan and presenting a method for calculating return on investment."

Each Smeal team member was awarded a cash prize and had the valuable opportunity to network with the competition's sponsors. In edition to FedEx Freight, executives from several corporations were on hand, including J.B. Hunt, Wal-Mart, Halliburton, and Procter & Gamble, among others.

"This victory is a testament to the depth and breadth of the Smeal MBA curriculum," says Bauer, who was also on the team that won this season's Big Ten and Pac-10/Big Ten case competitions.

Smeal's supply chain program was recently ranked as the top such program in North America in a survey published in the September 2005 issue of Supply Chain Management Review .