T.I.M.E.S. Local Qualification Vienna + Semi Final Lyon

TIMES  the Tournament In Management and Engineering Skills is the largest pan-European case study competition for Industrial Engineering and Management students.

Quite spontaneously our team decided to participate in the Local Qualification that was organized by Local Group Vienna and took place in the Management Faculty of the Vienna University of Technology

Every group consisted of four members, and had to solve one case. After 4 hours of reading the case files, group Discussion, Anlaysis, drawing Charts and tables, Calculating and even preparing the Presentation it was time to present our results to a 3 member Jury.

Although there are multiple Frameworks and Analysis Methods somehow surprisingly every group used similar approaches and also made similar mistakes in their argumentation.

When we presented our result to the jury, we got both bad and good feedback, we discovered our weak and strength points, we learned how a consultant should think, and what are the main aspects in analyzing a case.

To be honest it was a little bit surprising that we managed to win the Local Qualification because we had not really prepared a lot. But in the end our Presentation Skills made the difference.

This was totally great experience in Vienna and we looked ahead to the Semi Finals that where hold in Lyon.

Before we went to Lyon, we met a couple of times together and talked about our weak points, we tried to develop different analytic frameworks and we tried improve our organization during the Competition. Because there is only little time for every case especially the time management is very important for this kind of Competition.

 I was the first one,who arrived to Lyon in our group and met with the local ESTIEMers there, they prepared everything for us- Dormitories ,Rooms, Gala Dinner and the peoples who organized Lyon Semi Final were absolutely great.

After all Groups members arrived to Lyon, we came together and made a small meeting to fine tune the last settings and make sure that everybody is on the same page.

In the 2 days of the competition, we had to solve two different cases and battle with groups from all over Europe such as ETH Zürich, Finnland, Sweden, Norway, Spain etc.

Here the approaches from the different teams where very different but once again similar mistakes where made as well.

We knew, we had less experience than other groups, but our aim was to give the best and get to get some experience.

So we did not manage to win this one and had to understand that the teams from Tampere (Finland), Bremen (Germany) and Madrid (Spain) managed to convince the Jury from their argumentation.

We learned a lot, we met great people, we experienced a real competition and we developed our skills, that were all the things that a student can dream…

I had one of the best experiences of my life…

Thank you Vienna and Local Group Lyon….

Thank you Robert, Georg and Monika

Salih (LG Vienna)