Southwest District
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Student Case Competition

CLICK HERE FOR 2012 COMPETITION INFORMATION

2011 West Coast Student Case Competition Winners

Fifty-two students from 10 different schools competed as 12 teams in the 5th Annual Student Case Competition hosted by the Southwest District of APICS during the February 11-12, 2011 District meeting in San Diego, CA. As in previous years, there were 2 separate divisions: Graduate and an Undergraduate division. Three teams competed in the graduate division and 9 teams competed in the Undergrad division. Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo won 1st place in the Undergraduate division, while Cal State University Northridge took 2nd place honors in that division. The Graduate Division Winners were Thunderbird School of Global Management from Phoenix, Arizona for 1st place and San Diego State University took 2nd place honors.

Obtain the resumes of participating students

Students were given the case at 9 a.m. on Friday morning and turned in the case study paper (2 pages) and an 8 minute PowerPoint presentation at 6 p.m. that same evening. Students then presented the case orally to a team of 6 judges who selected the top 2 teams from each division to compete in the Final round of judging on Saturday morning. The oral judges for the final round were the chapter leaders of the APICS Southwest District.

The case was a fictitious manufacturing company that was facing severe late customer delivery problems and welding capacity constraints. The students were told to make recommendations to the executives of the company on ways to solve their problems. Students competed for cash awards provided by the Southwest District chapters. The Undergraduate 1st place team was also awarded acceptance into the APICS 2011 Scholars Program and transportation to the APICS International Conference in Pittsburgh, PA in October, 2011.

Other schools represented were Loyola Marymount University in the Graduate division. In the Undergraduate division, schools represented include University of Texas at El Paso and Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez who teamed up together. The balance of the undergrad teams were from the San Diego area including University of California at San Diego (UCSD), San Diego State University (2 teams), University of San Diego, and Cal State University at San Marcos (2 teams). Congratulations to all the students who competed! You are a credit to your schools and will make wonderful Operations Management professionals!

Next year, the student case competition will be held on Feb. 11-12, 2012 in San Gabriel, CA. Mark your calendars NOW!

Visit the 2011 Student Case Competition Webpage

Information from Past Student Case Competitions

2011 - Pictures/Videos from the Competition HERE

2010 - Pictures/Videos from the Competition HERE

2009 - Final Company Solution - Acme Case Study Outcome
2009 - Video from the competition HERE
2009 - Pictures from the competition HERE

2010 West Coast Student Case Competition Winners

Thirty-five (35) students from 5 different schools competed as 7 teams in the 4th Annual Student Case Competition hosted by the Southwest District of APICS during the February 19-20, 2010 district meeting in Phoenix, AZ. As in previous years, there were 2 separate divisions – a Graduate and an Undergraduate division. 5 teams competed in the graduate division, and 2 teams in the Undergrad division. Arizona State University swept both divisions by taking top honors. 2nd place was California State University-Northridge (CSUN) in the Undergrad division and Boise State University in the Graduate division.

Students were given the case at 9 a.m. on Friday morning and turned in the case study paper (2 pages) and an 8 minute PowerPoint presentation at 6 p.m. that same evening. They then presented orally, the case to a team of 6 judges who selected the top 2 teams from each division to compete in the Final round of judging on Sat. morning. The oral judges for the final round were the chapter leaders of the Southwest District APICS chapters.

The case was a fictitious global company that was facing severe quality problems and lack of control of some of their suppliers and out-sourced production. The students were told to make recommendations to the executives of the company on ways to solve their problems. Students competed for cash awards provided by the chapters of the Southwest District. The Undergraduate 1st place team was also awarded guaranteed acceptance into the APICS 2010 Scholars Program and transportation to the APICS International Conference in Nashville, TN in October, 2010.

Other schools represented were Thunderbird School of Global Management which sent 2 graduate teams. A special presentation was made by some High School students from Paradise Valley who assisted with the competition logistics and elected to also solve the case problem. Congratulations to all the students who competed! You are a credit to your schools and will make wonderful Operations Management professionals!

2009 West Coast Student Case Competition Winners

Thirty-six (36) students from 7 different schools competed as 9 teams in the 3nd Annual Student Case Competition hosted by the Southwest District of APICS during the February 6-7, 2009 district meeting in Torrance, CA. For the first time there were 2 separate divisions – a graduate and an Undergraduate division. 5 Undergrad teams competed for the honor of representing our district at the October 2009 APICS International Conference in Toronto, Canada. The CSUN Undergraduate team took 1st place and the winning team members are: Christa Elias, David Roman, Eric Bair, Kaloyan Borisov, and Roger Grato. 2nd place in the Undergrad division was won by Arizona State University (team 3). In the Graduate division, 1st place was taken by University of Arizona, and 2nd place was the graduate team from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

The competition was fierce as all teams had about 15 hours to work on the case study which was a real-life Inventory problem. They had to write a 3 page paper and create a 6-minute PowerPoint presentation. Then they presented their solutions orally to the chapter leaders of the Southwest district APICS chapters. Other schools represented were Chico State, Thunderbird School of Global Management, and University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV). Some of the 2008 participants and winners were present to assist district staff with this competition. Congratulations to all the students who competed! You are a credit to your schools and will make wonderful Operations Management professionals!

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