This week was a different type of seminar in our course. We spent the majority of the class doign a case study and analysis. The case was"Wireless Infrastructure for a Regional Food Safety Initiative in Southeast Asia".The case was about using technology to keep a track of livestock and meat lifecycles. This meant everything, from what the animal ate, where it went, where it was bred, and so on. It was an interesting concept that gets you thinking as to why we do not actually have this already, especially considering all the paranoia about bird flu, etc. Anyway some thing to learn here was how to actually speed read and grasp the important points of the study and manage time with the group to answering questions. I must say our group did not get off to the best of starts. We seemed to initially lack the ability to figure out how to go about doing this case analysis. I think we struggled in basically analysing what had to be done and with the time limit that was a bit of a problem. Some how though we did manage to come out with a relatively decent presentation of the interface. Similarly each group presented their ideas and at the end we had a discussion on each ones presentation. Most of us actually used pretty similar ideas and unfortunately none of us made something with use of graphics or visual aids. Great minds at work i guess haha!! What was nice about it was it gave us a feel of what case study tests are like. Infact a lot of companies are actually adopting this method is their recruitment methods. This is known as an 'In-box' exercise.
After all the group discussion was over Prof. Gilbert stressed that it was important to recognize which approach, for example, Value Chain or Process Flow Analysis, Value Systems Analysis, Financial Analysis, is required for the case. He also walked us through what a DHL value chain looks like. It was a different way to look at cases and being an engineering student I have not really been exposed to such things. Its a nice distraction from our technical subjects and in fact might even prove to be one of the most useful.
Last but not least we were briefed about the upcoming (actually it has already begun) Citibank Case Challenge 2007. It is a case study competition between Singapore university teams and organised by Citibank and SMU. I am proud to say I am taking part and in fact have already begun the preliminary round case with my group. It is great exposure especially since my group consists of 2 business and 2 engineering students. I hope we make it far in the competition and hoping to learn as much as possible.
The coming week will be spent editing bits and pieces of our elevator pitch and posting it up on YouTube. I will load it for you guys once it is done. Hope we get the most view ;)
After all the group discussion was over Prof. Gilbert stressed that it was important to recognize which approach, for example, Value Chain or Process Flow Analysis, Value Systems Analysis, Financial Analysis, is required for the case. He also walked us through what a DHL value chain looks like. It was a different way to look at cases and being an engineering student I have not really been exposed to such things. Its a nice distraction from our technical subjects and in fact might even prove to be one of the most useful.
Last but not least we were briefed about the upcoming (actually it has already begun) Citibank Case Challenge 2007. It is a case study competition between Singapore university teams and organised by Citibank and SMU. I am proud to say I am taking part and in fact have already begun the preliminary round case with my group. It is great exposure especially since my group consists of 2 business and 2 engineering students. I hope we make it far in the competition and hoping to learn as much as possible.
The coming week will be spent editing bits and pieces of our elevator pitch and posting it up on YouTube. I will load it for you guys once it is done. Hope we get the most view ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment