The APICS Challenge

18 Jan 16

MISI students came in 1st & 2nd place in their APICS team wins at the IAP in Boston USA. Agnes Wambui Maina was in the first place team with Sneha Susan Jacob in the second place team.

“I was in Team 8, which won the 2016 MIT – Boston APICS Students’ Innovation Competition. Our team was composed of Remya Pushpangatha Kurup – MIT, Tyler Cheever Lewis Martin – ZLC, Gaby Milagros Sifuentes Centeno – GCLOG and Myself – MISI”

“A total of twenty eight [28] teams participated where they were given a ten [10] day task to design an IoT or wearable, five [5] teams qualified for the finals. Overall, my team emerged in first [1st] place and Sneha’s team emerged in second [2nd] place. My team came up with an idea of a jacket that is able to track using secured telecommunication systems while Sneha and her team proposed a baby band that is attached to a 0-3 year old baby’s ankle to detect her emotions and all other conditions“
Agnes Wambui Maina

APICS is a premier professional association for supply chain and operations management and the leading provider of research, education and certification programs that elevate supply chain excellence, innovation and resilience. The Boston Chapter of APICS came forward and conducted a Student Innovation competition during our IAP session at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The student innovation competition dealt with how we as students would come up with “Demand planning for a new product launch”. For the innovation challenge, we (as a team) were to work as a Consumer Products company with a focus on technology products. We were to choose a technology product category either along the lines of IoT (Internet of Things) or Wearable Technology.

We were to convince the judges as to what was unique about the new product we created. Create the forecast factors for the Early Adopter phase and the Early Majority phase and determining the type of logistics to be used were among the issues that we had to present to the judges and convince them as to why the product would kick off in the market today.

It was a fun session where a lot of brainstorming went into play. Each one of us became entrepreneurs for those 10 days and we gave our pitch to the judges as if they were Venture Capitalists willing to invest in our product. The event not only brought out our innovative and creative streak it also brought out the budding entrepreneurs in us with the icing being that we were all Supply Chain Management students and had the knowledge of the how’s and the when’s and the what’s into bring the new product into the market.
Sneha Susan Jacob

Well Done, Agnes & Sneha