On Friday, September 14th, leading value chain professionals from 9 countries, 4 continents and various industries gathered for the second annual global final of The Fresh Connection (TFC) in Barcelona, Spain. The Appletiser Lead Team, which had qualified for the finals by winning the South African pool earlier this year, did their country proud by attaining a second place at this prestigious event. They were narrowly beaten by the Dutch dairy company, FrieslandCampina.
The Fresh Connection is regarded as one of the ultimate supply chain learning experiences for the profession. The challenge posed by the competition is for fellow team members to collaborate, craft a strategy, integrate decisions and implement change in order to completely transform a fictional company, The Fresh Connection Company, to make it as profitable as possible. Advanced simulation software calculates the consequences of the strategic and tactical decisions a team makes from one round to the other.
Says Appletizer’s Francois Rozan, after the team’s international success: “The Appletizer Lead Team highly recommends the Fresh Connection learning experience to any organisation wishing to bring about a culture of teamwork and close co-operation. We are highly impressed with the knowledge we obtained and have no doubt that our company’s value chain will greatly benefit from this in the foreseeable future.”
When asked which aspects of technical learning were the most valuable during the international games, Francois replied that no one strategy is the unique winning proposition. However, choosing one strategy, sticking to this strategy and aligning the entire organisation are key success factors. Aligning the different supply chain disciplines was critical to maximising the ROI.” We were presented with new opportunities to select different distribution partners to get the right fit with our supply chain strategy. Furthermore could we collaborate with competitive teams to achieve longer shelf lives on the Glass packs? Collaboration with the winning team actually helped us to move from 3rd to 2nd place. Right through the game we were challenged to compile all our technical calculations in a very short time span. We found that the first 6 rounds of the national game prepared us to work together as a well oiled machine”.
Francois added that his team felt that no one person can do it all in the game; each functional expert is key to good team performance. It is imperative that each function shares key information, challenges and opportunities so that they be engaged as a team and rapid decisions can be reached – just like the work environment!
“Especially under time constraint we were forced to give each other enough space to get his head around his own discipline and balancing that with the bigger picture. The simulated stressful environment stretched us all in terms of constructive communication and effective team work.”
The Appeltizer team rated the state of logistics planning in South Africa against that of the international competitors at the final very highly. The team stated “The fact that we came 2nd proved that the SA skill level is on par with the rest of the world. In Spain we played against the regional winners so every team had the opportunity to come out on top. It was extremely competitive and yet we all played in good spirit.
The experience simulates the practical issues very well and is an excellent reflection of the real world we face in the FMCG industry. We prefer by far the fun environment to a typical classroom/lecture environment. We experienced it as a typical on the job professional learning experience.”
SAPICS (The Association for Operation Management of Southern Africa), the host of the regional competition and sponsor of the Appletiser team’s participation in the international conclusion of the initiative in Barcelona, Spain, is proud to be associated with this learning initiative and congratulates the Appletiser team for the impressive result!
