GERMANY – We have written before on the excellent Kühne Logistics University (KLU) and how it prepares young people looking to make freight forwarding or other transport related trades a future career and its latest test epitomises what is best about such a scheme when last weekend the KLU held its second case competition for Bachelor students.
Eighteen competitors from Germany and Europe spent all Saturday poring over a humanitarian logistics case study with a view to presenting a good result to the jury and the task was a realistic disaster relief assignment for which participants in two-person teams had to draw up a meaningful strategic solution. Winning team was made up of two young women, Sybille Lips who partnered Florentine Genss and Sybille commented:
“Solving the case with a team partner you had only just gotten to know was a challenge in itself, but our different academic backgrounds complemented each other and helped us to solve the task professionally.”
Entrants came from Poland, Turkey and even Qatar to take part in the case competition, and all of them were ambitious students who love challenges of this kind: first to learn something and compete with others, then to win a scholarship to study at the KLU and Professor Maria Besiou, Assistant Professor of Logistics at the KLU praised the commitment to the case study that the participants showed and the impressive results which they achieved whilst Florentine explained her feelings on taking the test, saying:
“Drawing up an emergency logistics plan for an earthquake in Colombia under pressure of time is highly significant in terms of content. Presenting it – and in English – to three professors and a specialist with practical experience was very exciting.”
Demand was so strong and interest so great that another case competition will be held at the KLU next year and the keen interest shown in the competition was summed up by World Vision Germany’s Daniel Ginsberg who said:
“Humanitarian logistics is an exciting sector that triggers emotions even among people who are not logistics specialists because it appeals to the emotions. People can visualize tasks that need solving to cope with a humanitarian catastrophe, and the case study enabled participants to gain a deeper insight into the key role that logistics plays at aid organizations.”
Anyone wishing to contact the KLU with regard to studying is advised to contact Christine Sänger, +49 40 328 707–152 e mail study@the-klu.org
Photo: The winning team.
