JOIN USSymbiosis Institute of Business Management recently hosted ‘Convergence 2012’, an annual event which included an operations and IT summit.
More than 80 teams from across the country — which represented business schools like IIMs and FMS — came to participate in the fest.
One of the highlights of the fest was ‘Kurukshetra — The Battle Ground’, in which students had to display their business acumen.
The competition had four rounds, in which the scenario of a tender-opening process was simulated.In fact, in the third round, the participants had to physically bind books, as is done in a printing press.
In the last round, they had to find a solution to a live problem faced by an automobile component manufacturer. Ultimately, Christ College; Great Lakes, Chennai;TAPMI, Manipal; Welingkar, Mumbai and SIIB, Pune emerged as the finalists of this competition, with Christ College winning the first prize. The second day was devoted to a debate, which centred around the question of whether manufacturing or services would drive the Indian economy.
Shankar Ramanathan, general manager of 3M, addressed this topic first, after which a panel discussion was held. This included industry stalwarts like Rajkumar, the COO of Sequel Logistics; Vasu Ramanujam, the director-operations of Entercomes; Sachin, the director of Tyco and Sonali Khopkar, the associate director of Capgemini.
It was moderated by Swarnendu Ghosh, the vice president of operations at Welspun.
A few important points came up during this discussion, which the students found rather insightful.
Sonali Khopkar perhaps summed up popular sentiment best when she said, “When it comes to manufacturing and services, I think there can’t be an either or situation. Both sectors complement and supplement each other.”
Aditya Narayanan, one of the students who helped put together the occasion, described the entire process as a learning experience.
“Events such as these not only give us a chance to learn how to organise something of this stature, but also give us an opportunity to gain knowledge from the first-hand experiences of the speakers,” he points out.