The Challenge Concept
Join this edition of the Global Educator Challenge and compete against educators from all around the world! You can be the captain of your own team with your colleagues or peers. Surprise them in the field of supply-chain-management-related topics with this year’s theme: supply chain resilience.
All you need is at least one educator (max. two) who is certified in The Fresh Connection business game and two or three educators that are new to The Fresh Connection. A team should consist of at least four educators.
About The Challenge
The Global Educator Challenge starts on November 7th, and it takes place fully online.
The challenge will cover our learning solution: Supply Chain Resilience. This solution covers everything in creating a resilient supply chain. During six weeks, participants will play three rounds of the Ultimate Value Chain Experience in teams of four (maximum five). Participants get to run their own virtual company called The Fresh Connection, a manufacturer of fruit juices. Faced with declining performance, the management team must get the company back on track as quickly as possible. It is a high-pressure environment where effective supply chain management is the key to success!
With this year’s theme, Supply Chain Resilience, you’ll experience:
Collaborating with external parties
Optimize your supplier footprint
Bring strategy into action
Manage your customer expectations
Teams will experience the impact of every decision they make,
not just in their own functional ‘silo’ but across their business, and the entire value chain!
not just in their own functional ‘silo’ but across their business, and the entire value chain!
VP Purchasing
Responsible for selecting the right suppliers and agreeing service-level agreements (SLAs) with suppliers, including possible collaboration options.
VP operations
Must decide on capacity in warehouses and production areas and approve investment in bottling lines and mixers. Can introduces various improvement projects. Has the ability to outsource outbound warehousing.
VP Supply Chain
Manages inventories (safety stock and lot size settings), production intervals and the frozen period of production.
VP Sales
Agrees SLAs with customers, manages the product and customer portfolio, forecasts demand and can introduce collaboration concepts.
The Challenge Theme
This edition’s theme is Supply Chain Resilience.
This year's theme is supply chain resilience. Operational risk and interruption can threaten multiple areas of the supply chain. You are challenged to build a resilient supply chain that has the capability to mitigate most supply chain disruptions and greatly limits the impact of those that occur.
Full Program
Optional Webinar
4 November 2022
7 PM - 8 AM CT (UTC -6) Start of the Challenge
7th November, 2022
8 AM CT (UTC -6)
3 PM CET (UTC +1)
Round 1
Start:
7th November, 2022
8 AM CT (UTC -6)
3 PM CET (UTC +1)
Closing:
18th November, 2022
10 AM CT (UTC -6)
5 PM CET (UTC +1)
Round 2
Start:
21st November, 2022
8 AM CT (UTC -6)
3 PM CET (UTC +1)
Closing:
2nd December, 2022
10 AM CT (UTC -6)
5 PM CET (UTC +1)
Round 3
Start:
5th December, 2022
8 AM CT (UTC -6)
3 PM CET (UTC +1)
Closing:
15th December, 2022
10 AM CT (UTC -6)
5 PM CET (UTC +1)
End of the Challenge
15th December, 2022
10 AM CT (UTC -6)
5 PM CET (UTC +1)
Ceremony
Announcement of the winners
How to join?
- Conditions for creating your own team:
The team has to consist of a maximum of 5 participants (minimum 4)- At least one and a maximum of two of the members must be a certified educator of The Fresh Connection. Certified educators can thus invite peers without experience. These can be from their own university, or from other universities as well.
- Only the team captain has to register and we will contact you for the contact details of your team members after registration.
- Must be teaching in higher education.
- Register with a university email address.
Why you should join the Global Educator Challenge?
Experience the power of true alignment
Increase cross-functional knowledge and awareness
Develop advanced decision-making skills
Learn how to effectively manage trade-offs
Gain knowledge of how to put Strategy into Action
See that benefits of collaboration are measurable
Learn to challenge decisions and underlying assumptions
Build effective teams
Discover new functionalities of The Fresh Connection
Be rewarded for excellence
Expand your international network
Become The Fresh Connection World Champion
Our team brought together educators from four continents: Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America. Each of us with different backgrounds and experiences. We all understood that this was a team effort. From that, it is pretty clear that there is no room for ego or silo thinking.
This, plus the early definition of roles and rules of interaction, made it possible for the team to perform well from the beginning. Time differences and remote coordination were challenging but both the use of remote collaboration tools (Zoom, WhatsApp and emails) and the user-friendliness of the simulation platform facilitated the experience.
– Winning team from Spring Edition 2021
I feel the Challenge is a great opportunity to meet with colleagues, feel the same experience we have to create in our courses with students and to have training in situations that usually we don’t get in the classroom.
In the fall edition, it was a great idea to mix educators with and without experience with the business game in the same team. This included other goals to play as a team with different knowledge levels of the business game. Plus, we had to try to win, support our colleagues to understand the business game, motivate us all to be one aligned team, and everything at the same time! I will for sure continue to play with my students in my courses and participate in the next Challenges.