A second team, PepsiCo – Fritolay, will join our country’s representatives in this year’s The Fresh Connection 2015 final. Together with the Polish Champions, PKN Orlen, they will compete in Amsterdam for the title of the best supply chain management team in the world.
Circumstance, the rules, and the excellent results achieved in The Fresh Connection simulator by the PepsiCo – Fritolay team led to surprising but excellent news for them. One of the teams that qualified for the global final withdrew from the last stage of the tournament. In such a case, the rules state that its place is taken by the team with the next best result in The Global Challenge stage, which receives a so-called “Wild Card”.
The PepsiCo – Fritolay team was ranked in the top five of the last round of The Global Challenge. Despite such an excellent result, another rule did not allow them to be honored with an appearance in the final stage of the competition. Only one team could represent a country in the global final. The latest decision by the organizers will certainly please Polish TFC fans. It can be said with a wink that at this moment, the chances of the World Champion title in supply chain management staying in Poland (last year this title was won by a team from SPX Flow Technology Poland from Bydgoszcz) have doubled.
The travel and accommodation costs for both teams in Amsterdam will be covered by MPM Productivity Management – the organizer of the Polish TFC qualifiers.
The Fresh Connection* (TFC) is an innovative “web-based business” simulation that engages participants in making strategic decisions in the process of managing a company (named The Fresh Connection) that produces fruit juices. The decisions to be made by the simulation participants are identical to the real dilemmas that employees encounter in their daily work. Working in four-person teams, participants represent four departments of the company: sales, purchasing, supply chain, and finance. The virtual company is facing a decline in performance, and the company’s management must get the company out of trouble as quickly as possible. This is a high-pressure environment where effective supply chain management is the key to success. Understanding the connections between individual functions and cooperation are key elements of the entire enterprise’s success.