Website www.times.estiem.org | ||
Key people Andreas Swahn (founder)
Olivia French Pena (project leader) | ||
The Tournament In Management and Engineering Skills (TIMES) is the only European-wide business case competition of its kind, and has been organised since 1994.
The European case study competition TIMES was created in 1994 by Andreas Swahn, Vice President of Activities for ESTIEM as project manager. After having visited the London School of Economics in 1993 and the case competition CHAMP (Challenge in Management Perspectives). The first competition was organised with semi-finals in Stockholm (Sweden), Braunschweig (Germany), Lisbon (Portugal) and St. Petersburg (Russia). The final was held in Eindhoven (The Netherlands) and the team of Stockholm became the first winner of TIMES. The qualifying case for all students the first year was related to LKAB and steel production processes. The semi-final case was with Ericsson Mobile and about optimizing investment for mobile masts. The final in Eindhoven consisted of two cases, the first was from the Rotterdam Port and the second case in cooperation with Philips Electronics.
Today, it is considered a prestigious and highly acclaimed case study competition. Two qualification rounds are required to be selected for participation in the TIMES Final. Before reaching this final stage, all the participants first take part in a local qualification round at their home university after which the winning teams are allowed to take part in one of the Semi-Finals, which are organised in six locations in different parts of Europe. The Final brings together the best teams to compete on three case studies. In between the intense competition days, participants are offered the opportunity of visiting sponsoring organisations as well as learning about the host country through visits and presentations.
TIMES is the flagship project of ESTIEM, that has established an extensive network covering 32 countries and 81 universities, reaching as many as 70,000 students. Every year the tournament attracts around 250 top teams being challenged in their management and engineering skills and competing for the title of “Industrial Engineering and Management Students of the Year”.