Four students from the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology (EBIT), along with their lecturer and mentor Dr Olufemi Adetunji, have been selected to represent the University of Pretoria (UP) and South Africa in the Netherlands during the final week of the Supply Chain Finance Community's Global Student Challenge.

Mashudu Mukhaninga, Zime Mtolo, Getrude Chibvongodze, Pamela Mukwenha and Dr Adetunji are currently in Zwolle, the Netherlands, where they will be competing against the world's best teams between 11 and 16 April 2016. Internships and cash prizes sponsored by international companies will be awarded to the winners.

Teams from universities and business schools across the globe compete annually in The Cool Connection Global Student Challenge. As part of the competition, teams have to save a fictional company that manufactures personal care products from ruin. In this fictional scenario, in which the company is suffering severe losses, a new management team has to be appointed and each student has to assume a role in this team, which has to make the company profitable again by realising the highest possible return on investment. The participants do this by making strategic and tactical decisions to optimise the complete supply chain.

The participation of the UP students thus far has been as follows:

• In the qualifying rounds, held from June to October 2015, they competed against 200 teams from 96 countries.
• In the global rounds, held in November and December 2015, they competed against more than 100 teams from 38 countries.
• Leading up to the finals in April 2016, they were selected as one of the top 22 teams in the world.

The University is extremely proud of these students and wishes them the very best for their preparation and participation in this challenge.