The Soft Pitch

This week at Avnet, we’re gearing up for the 5th Avnet Tech Games .  It’s a bunch of contests, nine to be exact, that test students skills in tech projects they would have to do as part of a real job, like designing a network for a small company or assembling a computer the fastest and then testing it to make sure it works.  They also have a couple of contests that focus on some not so traditional business activities – like designing a solar lamp that could be used in third-world countries where electric grids are pretty much non-existent. And even a contest that challenges students to design a data center that uses less energy.

I’ve been to the event in the past and there’s a ton of energy surging from contest to contest.  But then there’s quiet periods, too, when the student teams are intensely focused on building a robot that will race around a course carrying a little red ball, for example.  The robot races themselves draw lots of cheers and more than a few groans.  But watching people squint and study, well, it can be a bit dull. To spice up the quiet periods, the event team has put together a couple activities anyone can participate in.  How about a “pecha kucha” presentation contest anyone?  I went to my first of these last week at Ignite Phoenix 6  .  Presenters had 5 minutes to talk about anything (And believe me anything was the rule.  There were presentations on lessons learned from cows, repealing photo radar laws, how to make a perfect cup of coffee at work, losing 85 pounds through natural foods, etc. etc.).  The trick in pecha kucha, which is a presentation style that originated in Japan and pronounced in three syllables as “pe-chak-cha”,  is that you have 20 slides, 15 seconds per slide, and the slides advance automatically.  You can’t control them, you just keep going.  This keeps the presentations lively, for sure, but also concise and to the point.  So I’m looking forward to seeing who comes forward at the Avnet Tech Games to participate.  There’s also going to be a “Find the Gnome” game and prizes for these on-site games are an iPad and a new laptop computer.  I could really use a new laptop for my daughter, bummer I can’t win!

But wait, there’s more!

The Tech Games team has really been busy this year.  Not only are there new on-site events – this year they also introduced a series of virtual games so that students anywhere around the globe could participate.  And they did.  The virtual games attracted more than 400 students from nine countries.  I thought it was pretty interesting, so I asked Cory Fetter to write a report on several of the games.  Here’s his first story on the RedPrairie Supply Chain Challenge.  Read on …

Virtual Avnet Tech Games goes International and Tests Students Skills on a Global Level

Four students from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) competed against teams from more than 40 colleges and from nine different countries in the RedPrairie Supply Chain Challenge, as part of the virtual Avnet Tech Games. Eli Reihman, Tony Nguyen, Jim Duvall and Chris Crouch managed their business most profitably to be named this year’s winners.

The Avnet Tech Games is a multidisciplinary technology competition that requires students to test their knowledge and creativity. This year, Avnet introduced a series of virtual contests making the games year round and attracting global interest.

The RedPrairie Supply Chain Challenge was one competition out of the four spring virtual games hosted this year. More than 300 students registered to compete with a total of 110 teams in this one game. The RedPrairie Supply Chain Challenge incorporated a customized web-based version of the game, Littlefield Technologies, developed by Responsive Learning Technologies.

The idea for the adding the supply chain game came from students in Avnet’s summer intern program. Teachers familiar with the Avnet Tech Games then suggested Avnet reach out to Responsive Learning Technologies to create a customized version of the game, Littlefield Technologies. The basic game is a tool used by many undergraduate and graduate supply chain programs around the globe, but Avnet wanted to do something different. Avnet’s Steve Schultz, director of strategic planning and communications, Michele Pfund, clinical associate professor of Supply Chain Management at the W. P. Carey School of Business at ASU and the supply chain management chair at W. P. Carey, William Verdini, collaborated to create an realistic new version of the game that reflects the challenges of today’s economy. Avnet asked RedPrairie, a global supplier to Avnet Logistics, to sponsor the game and help with advertising and college participation.

In the game scenario, students analyzed and projected customer demand and determined how to best process orders across numerous machines with different capacities. The students had to make critical decisions such as deciding when to purchase additional equipment to keep pace with growing demand and when to sell off assets to improve the bottom line once the demand had started to decline. Students were only given a few hours to complete the entire game. The winning team chose to use 2 ½ hours to reach optimal capacity, the next hour was used to process the order backlog and in the last 30 minutes students had to deal with a market shift and focus on processing the remaining orders while liquidating surplus inventory and equipment. The game was extremely close with the lead jumping back and forth down to the last minute, but in the end the four UCSD students were deemed the winners.

-          Cory Fetter

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