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TUTA students Pasi Lohi Reetta Repo and Marko Sommarberg and Markus Junkkari in front of the Karlsruhe Palace

Four white wine bottles and a pile of diplomas lay on the table. The main judge concludes his speech on the toughness of rating the teams on their case solving capabilities: “…and we have the pleasure to award the winning title of TIMES Semi-Final Karlsruhe to … Helsinki”.
 

After a two-year break, Aalto IEM (Department of Industrial Engineering and Management) student team has reached their way to the final. TIMES, short for Tournament in Management and Engineering Skills, is an annual business case solving competition organised by the European IEM student organisation ESTIEM. From over 70 participating universities and 350 teams, the top eight compete in the final for the glorious title of “IEM Students of the Year”. In TIMES, teams solve business cases in 3-4 hours, after which a 20-minute presentation is held to a jury consisting of academics and industry experts.
 

Markus Junkkari, Pasi Lohi, Reetta Repo and Marko Sommarberg are all fifth year students. Their team first cleared the local qualification organised at Aalto in late November. After determined training with companies and strategy professors at DIEM, they headed for a semi-final in Karlsruhe, Germany. In addition to the Finnish rival, Vaasa, other teams came from Turkey, Germany and Latvia. Eight competitors altogether.

The intensive four-day trip to the motherland of pilsner began with two case days: each team solved one case on both days. Each day the jury would grade the performance, and at the end of the second day the combined results were announced. Based on the individual team feedbacks the jury had given on the cases, the Aalto team knew they were strong. Now, their names announced, they knew it had been enough.

The story continues in the beginning of April, when the grand final is organised in Ilmenau, Germany. You can show your support and follow the journey on the

Tuodaan poika kotiin!

Text by Reetta Repo