In the five-week online MEMPC PriSim Business War Games Competition, each team had to analyze the business environment, articulate a mission, develop and execute a strategy, and vie for market share and profit.  

For the second consecutive year, the Purdue team (with different members each year) finished second in a squeaker – within less than one percentage point of first place. Compiling a score of 99.68 percent, the 2019 Purdue team on Feb. 27 lost to Northwestern University, which captured 100 percent.

The other teams, which didn’t come close, were from Dartmouth College, Duke University, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Southern California. All participating teams represent institutions in the Master of Engineering Management Programs Consortium (MEMPC).

While the Purdue score fell slightly short, the experience was long on value for team members Krutartha Jathar, Apurwa Gokhale, Kartikeya Gupta and Ria Patel.

“The primary purpose of the simulation is to learn, and our students excelled in that regard,” says Eric VandeVoorde, Director of Professional Engineering Master’s Programs at Purdue. “I’m truly proud of their performance – the outcome and the professional way they conducted themselves.”

(Left to right) Krutartha Jathar, Ria Patel, Apurwa Gokhale, and Kartikeya Gupta represented Purdue in the MEMPC PriSim Business War Games Competition.

VandeVoorde says the MEMPC competition “offers students unique opportunities to apply both theoretical concepts and actual work experience in a tangible manner through a simulated business environment.”

The students attest to those benefits.

“I gained deeper insights into managing large-scale business operations for success within a competitive environment, and I found out how hard it can be to run a large corporation while remaining profitable,” Jathar says. “The competition empowered me to think about how classroom learning applies to real business scenarios. Mechanical engineering and business courses related to product design, strategy and innovation helped me translate concepts to the business world.”

In two examples, Jathar drew on strategy courses to formulate short-term decisions and evaluate how they would affect long-term goals, and he tapped knowledge of emerging technologies to explore expansion into new markets.

For team member Ria Patel, “a mandatory marketing management course proved to be a great help, as it was based on a similar business scenario and use of simulation software to quantitatively analyze data and make strategic decisions.” In addition, she notes, “Several strategies, such as decision tree analysis, helped us evaluate our competitor’s strategy and determine our course of action.”

The students also integrated lessons from internships and full-time work into their competition roles. While Jathar found his Jaguar Land Rover and other automotive industry exposure particularly relevant to the contest, he says, “This competition enabled me to look at any industry from a bird’s-eye perspective and use first principles to solve challenging problems by creating unique solutions.”

On a similar note, Patel says, “Participating in this competition helped me understand and research an entirely new industry, and to use project management skills gained in a different arena to analyze and make effective decisions.” She applied competencies cultivated in an internship at OrthoWorx, a nonprofit in the medical device industry, to her auto industry role in the contest.

Pointing to such holistic learning opportunities, VandeVoorde says: “Taking part in this competition enhances students’ profiles and helps develop tech leaders for industry positions. Students discover how leadership success requires a broad skill set, including abilities to function as a team, meet deadlines and build relationships.” 

Cooperating with diverse team members was a chief area of learning and vital to outstanding competition results, the students say.

“All of us came from different walks of life and had different expertise, which we used to maximum advantage,” Patel says. “We collaborated perfectly. Our ideas were usually in sync, but when they weren’t aligned, we respected one another’s perspectives. Mutual respect and efficient communication were most important to our team’s accomplishments. Everyone’s contributions were necessary for excellent performance.”

Jathar says: “It was very easy for us to bond and work together because everyone shared the same level of enthusiasm for achieving the end goal of winning the competition. I would attribute our success to presenting a united front, listening to every stakeholder, proving the validity of our thoughts, and collectively making decisions to attain desired results.”

He adds: “I feel extremely fortunate to have had this opportunity to represent Purdue University at such a coveted competition. It makes me proud to have had a chance to work with some of the brightest minds at Purdue to achieve high performance and compete against talented students representing other universities.”

Given the students’ feedback and his own observations, VandeVoorde says, “Purdue absolutely will enter the MEMPC competition in 2020, when we’ll be looking for another strong showing and a new round of learning.”