UNC Kenan-Flagler MBA students won first place at the Ninth Annual Operations Case Competition at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business Nov. 5-6. MBA students from UNC Kenan-Flagler also defeated Duke students in the annual Deloitte Consulting "Battle of the Blues" Case Competition Nov. 18-19 at Duke University.

Participation in the Carnegie Mellon Operations Case Competition is by invitation only. The UNC Kenan-Flagler winning team of Jacob Evans, Sergio Gutierrez, Bill Lam and Andrew Thiesing competed against 15 other teams, including teams from Kellogg, Darden, Yale, Cornell, Sloan, Wharton, Michigan, Purdue, Wisconsin, Vanderbilt and Texas. Teams from Kellogg and Texas came in second and third, respectively.

The teams were given the task of how to help Union Pacific Railroad, this year's main sponsor, minimize the $65 million spent annually in van costs. According to Tepper’s Web site, the UNC Kenan-Flagler team "wowed Union Pacific Railroad executives with their plan to reduce the vendor’s power and build accountability."

"Winning the Carnegie Mellon Operations Case Competition is a great achievement. The operations faculty are delighted with the way our students have assimilated the knowledge from the classroom and used that to compete with their peers from other top schools," said Jay Swaminathan, chair of the operations area and Benjamin Cone Research Professor at UNC Kenan-Flagler. In recent U.S. News & World Report specialty rankings, deans ranked UNC’s production/operations area No. 10.

UNC Kenan-Flagler first-year MBA students captured all four of the top four places in the Deloitte Consulting Case Competition, building on a strong showing last year when the School’s teams finished first and second.

Teams of five first-year students were given case problems Nov. 18 and spent the night crunching the numbers and developing a winning strategy for their case client. They presented their findings the next morning to panels of Deloitte consultants and UNC Kenan-Flagler and Fuqua faculty.

"This important event gives Deloitte a first-hand look at the skills of our students, and it gives students an important educational opportunity conducted under simulated real-world conditions," said Ed Cornet, who is head of the MBA management consulting concentration.

UNC Kenan-Flagler first-year students on the four winning Deloitte competition teams included:

• (First place) Richard Culberson, Paul Cox, Christina Waugh, Jason Baker and Jacob Evans.
• (Second place) Jaime McQueen, Jesus Guevara, Jeremy Dobbie, Jimmy Rosen and Gretchen Dunnaway.
• (Third place) Rafael Melo, Rajneesh Garga, Joe Lewis, James Wolf and Maheshkumar Alurkar.
• (Fourth place) Mehmet Akgun, Denis Akutsu, Gonzalo Autrique, Manish Hebbar and Smith Taweelerdniti.