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JAIMS Team Wins International Competition
HONOLULU — An international team of MBA
students sponsored by JAIMS has won The Universities Business Challenge,
a business management simulation game for universities and colleges
primarily throughout the United Kingdom.
The team of five students, from the Japan-focused
Master of Business Administration program (JEMBA, offered in partnership
with the University of Hawaii College of Business Administration),
was the only team from an American educational institute and the
only team outside of the UK. After winning the regional semifinals
in London in January, they returned to the UK on March 4 to take
part in the grand finals.
"We are proud of the team members for their
performance and achievement," said Glenn Miyataki, president
of JAIMS, Hawaii’s largest private management institute. "They’ve
helped to put JAIMS and the JEMBA program on the map in UK, and
their victory is a great testament to their competence, insights
and teamwork. They applied what they’ve learned in class!"
"Our collaboration with JAIMS on the JEMBA
program has produced students with global vision, and this win proves
they are second to none," commented David Bess, dean of the
College of Business Administration at UH.
Team members were Chee Meng Chan from Singapore,
Marie Antoinette Go from the Philippines, Sanjay Pareek from India,
and Suzanne Nakano and Curtis Washington from Hawaii. They beat
out teams from the University of Edinburgh, University of Newcastle,
Lancaster University and University of Warwick. The Challenge, designed
by Peritas Ltd. and sponsored by The Chartered Institute of Management
Accountants, provided participants an opportunity to act as board
directors of Brew Masters Brewing Company, a producer of fine ales,
and make critical business decisions that affect the day-to-day
running of the company. The objectives were to win business, maximize
profit, enhance customer satisfaction and raise employee morale.
While the teams made both short- and long-term
decisions on pricing, marketing, production and stock control, they
were also faced with pressures such as recession, rising transportation
costs, beer contamination and image problems.
"We really worked hard for this victory,"
said Washington, chair of the winning team. "We had to make
a serious adjustment to our business strategy because certain factors
such as the market demand had changed. But in the end, what sealed
our victory was our ability to reduce production costs to the extent
that we were able to price our competitors out of the market and
still make a profit."
With backgrounds in semiconductor manufacturing,
finance, real estate, education and accounting, each member took
on different roles in the Challenge-from auditor to marketer to
accountant and analyst.
Before reaching the semifinals in January, the
team handled various business scenarios by Internet, fax and e-mail
weekly from October through December, with the base of the competition
in London. All team members volunteered to participate in the Challenge
outside of their full-time class schedule. Initially 62 teams from
five regions were involved in the Challenge. The JAIMS-sponsored
team, who represented the southern region, competed against three
other teams in their regional semifinal at the Guinness Brewery
in London.
The one-day grand final competition was held
in Windsor at the Beaumont Training and Education Center, Peritas’
headquarters. Peritas, one of Europe’s largest information
technology training, consultant and education organizations, is
a subsidiary of ICL, a UK-based Fujitsu Ltd. company. The team won
a cash prize of 1,000 pounds (or $1,600) and crystal bowls engraved
with their names as grand champions of The Universities Business
Challenge.
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