Students offer e-business advice

By Megan Finnerty
Asst. Campus Editor

Based on the success of a trip by three teams of Krannert master's students, who participated in a case competition at General Electric's world-renowned Crotonville Training Facility in New York, GE is planning on making the case competition an annual arrangement with Krannert.

"The students were diligent, creative and obviously did their research," said Irene King, six-sigma leader of GE Reinsurance. "They really gave us some food for thought when we went back to deciding what we are going to do in e-business."

The students were given an overview of GE's transformations over the last 20 years. Then they were presented with several problems that GE is currently facing involving e-business. The next morning at 8, the students — some of whom stayed awake until 3 a.m. working by only the light of their computer screens — presented their solutions to a panel of six GE executives.

"Work was difficult because the lights in the GE building shut off at 1:30 a.m.," said Mandy Schlegel, a graduate student. "Some people burn the midnight oil … we just used the light from the computer screen."

The students, who were selected by submitting a résumé and answering several questions, had specializations in human resources, finance and operations. Each team had a member from each background.

Team one was made up of graduate students John Fike, Rich Southwell and Arthur Stowe. Team two included Josh Corn, Yashekia Felder and Todd Koning. Team three, the first-place finishers and winners of $150, was graduate students John Curtright, Hector Pulido and Schlegel.

Other Purdue participants were Jim Ward, associate professor of management who was on the GE executive judging panel, and Sarah Wassgren, assistant director of the Dauch Center for the Management of Manufacturing Enterprises who determined how the program could be improved in the future.

"It was a great learning experience to work on a real business case, learning from the people involved in the process, and to come up with strategic solutions for real, current issues being faced by General Electric," Wassgren said.

The students labored in marathon problem-solving sessions, working to identify the greatest threats and opportunities facing GE in e-business, to identify GE's strengths and weaknesses and to make recommendations to GE's CEO and board of directors based upon their analyses.

"We started working on the case at 1 p.m., broke for dinner at 7 p.m., met again at 8 p.m. and went to bed at 3 a.m.," said Stowe. "We reconvened at 6:45 a.m. after a brief, but welcome, three-hour nap to set up and practice a couple of times. We then presented at 8 a.m. Saturday morning."

According to King, GE hires more graduates from Purdue than any other university; more than 800 employees are Purdue alumni. Many of these graduates are from the Schools of Engineering, but GE would like to increase its recruiting efforts in the Krannert master's program.

"Purdue has been GE's No. 1 recruiting school for years in technical fields like science, engineering, technology," King said. "And now there are some shifts in GE from being a manufacturing- to service-based corporation, so we really want to increase our visibility with Krannert because those graduates have the types of skill we need."