David Quoted In The News On His Team's Win...

LFM/MIT Sloan Team Places First in Carnegie Mellon Operations Case Competition

Win marks third year winning top award

By Lois Slavin, Communications Director, MIT Engineering Systems DivisionNovember 27, 2007
A team of LFM and MIT Sloan MBA students took first place at Carnegie Mellon University’s 12th Annual International Operations Case Study Competition, held in Pittsburgh, PA on November 9-10, 2007. Members included LFM ‘09s David Larson, Pete Frys, and Laurel Hoffman, and MIT Sloan ’09 MBAs Mike Beaser and Steve Rulison.

This marks the third year that the MIT team, which has always included LFM has won first place. Others include the 2000 team, which tied for first place, and those in 2003. Another team with LFM members took second place in 2001.

The 2007 competition was sponsored by Amazon.com, Honeywell, Cooper, Eaton, Graham Packaging Company, and Union Pacific Building America and managed by the Operations Management Club at CMU’s Tepper School of Business. Over a dozen top-tier schools from around the world competed for a cash prize of 10 thousand dollars.

For the approximately 12 or so MIT students who aspired to enter, the competition started two weeks before the actual CMU event, when a "case-off" - a mini-competition -- was held to determine which five would represent MIT.

"One of the judges told me that they chose the most talkative students," recalled Larson. "Their reasoning was if you’re not talking, you’re not helping."

After winning the case-off, Larson and his team members prepared for the real thing by presenting a practice case to Don Rosenfield, director of the LFM Fellows Program, and members of the MIT Sloan Operations Club who gave invaluable feedback. Larson added that because the LFMs had not worked with the Sloan MBAs previously, "it was a good opportunity to bond, develop a presentation template, set up a timeline, and work out any bugs ahead of time."

Read the full article at: http://lfm.mit.edu/?fileName=news_articles/lfm_cmu2007/lfm_cmu2007.html%20