Students of the Faculty of Economics and Business UGM finished Runners Up in the STAR Case Competition. The competition was held from 11 to 15 April at the Rotterdam School of Management (RSM), Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The UGM team, consisting of Putu Takumi Wijaya (Management), Selma Elvita Rani (Accounting), Santika Wibowo (Accounting), and Nela Navida (Economics), successfully finished in second place after solving a business case in 24 hours. In this competition, they were asked to address a business problem that occurred at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport.
At the annual international competition organized by the RSM, the UGM team has to compete against 8 teams from several universities around the world. The competition was also attended by Erasmus University, National University of Singapore, University of Washington, Seattle, St. Petersburg University, Russia, St. Gallen University, Switzerland, and Cornivus University of Budapest.
"The competition was joined by nine leading world universities which have been accredited by The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB)," said Selma on Wednesday (11/5) at UGM.
Selma explained that in the competition all teams competed to find a solution for the case in Amsterdam Schiphol Airport which was facing human resource inefficiencies. The UGM team offered its “Windmill Solution” for the problem.
There were several ways that were proposed by UGM team to overcome the human resources inefficiency at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. The solutions included the use of information systems with trend analysis that could be used to estimate the number of human resources required by each division at certain times. For example, the number of workers at the airport would be tailored to the number of passengers, weather conditions, and other factors.
To support such systems, Selma and her team offered automated passenger counting. Through this system, one could quickly provide information on the number of passengers.
"In addition, we offered an integrated information system which would be able to provide notifications when things happened unexpectedly. Suppose there was a fire or a riot at the airport, there would be notifications," Selma said.
Selma said that before finalizing the case they were invited to visit Amsterdam Schiphol Airport to see the real conditions in the field. The participants were given the opportunity to observe the business processes directly.
After the visit, all participants were asked to formulate solutions to the problem faced by the company. Nine teams went through two stages in the competition. In the elimination round, the UGM team beat Thailand's Chulalongkorn University and the University of Washington and advanced to the final round where they faced the other two finalists, the University of St. Petersburg and St. Gallen University.
"We’re pleased and grateful that the UGM team could achieve second place in this prestigious competition," she said.
Salma added that the achievements cannot be separated from the team's hard work in finding a comprehensive solution to the case. In addition, they thanked the faculty for its support and facilitation and for providing guidance.
"Hopefully, in the next competition, we can accomplish another achievement on behalf of UGM at the global level," she said.