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Rules of TIMES Case Study Competition

Tournament Conditions

  • A team constis of 3 or 4 contestants
  • Language of instruction is English
  • No materials allowed except a dictionary and a calculator
  • Solving time: 3 to 4 hours
  • Presentation time 15 to 20 minutes plus 10 to 15 minutes for questions by the Jury
  • Presentation method: transparencies (overhead slides) or flip charts

 

Rules of TIMES

The followed rules are valid during the entire competition and may not be circumvened.

  1. A team must consist of 3 or 4 participants.
  2. Participants must be students associated with a member of ESTIEM, or Industrial Engineering and Management students, studying for a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree at an ESTIEM university for the duration of the tournament.
  3. A minimum of two team members must be students from the university in which the Local Qualification takes place.
  4. A minimum of two members must remain in the team from the Local Qualification until the Final.
  5. A maximum of two ESTIEMers from other Local Groups or exchange students of Industrial Engineering and Management programms of other ESTIEM universities are allowed to participate in one team.
  6. A student can only participate in one Local Qualification and can only represent one Local Group of ESTIEM per TIMES edition.
  7. The Local Qualifications, Semi-Finals and Final must all be held in English.
  8. All the cases not provided by Central TIMES should follow the Case Guidelines and must be approved by the Case Quality Team (casequality.times@estiem.org).
  9. All equipment used during the cases, for preparation, presentations and questions, must be provided by the organisers. Participants are not allowed to use their own materials, except for non-graphic and function calculators and dictionaries.
  10. In the context of cases, the preparation and presentation must be during the same day. The teams must have between 3 and 4 hours for preparing a case, 15-20 minutes for the presentation, and 10-15 minutes for questions from the Jury. There should be a buffer of at least 5 minutes between the end of the preparation time and the start of the presentation, during which all material must be collected from the team. There are different types of time organisation, but for Semi-Finals and Final, ‘Time delay’ is required (See Competition Guideline Nr. 5). The questions from the Jury must follow immediately after the presentation. All teams must have the same amount of time for preparation, presentation and questions.
  11. The team must present an oral solution to the case. The teams are allowed to use visual support material provided by the organisers during the presentation. All teams must have the same provided materials.
  12. During the whole competition other participants are not allowed to be in the audience of other team’s presentations (Exceptions clarified in Guideline Nr. 6).
  13. The organisers must inform the participants beforehand about all rules especially: solving time, presentation time, question time, and provided materials.
  14. For each case day, the Jury must consist of at least 3 members.
  15. Students without a Master’s degree are not allowed to be members of the Jury.
  16. At least one Jury member must be of a different field of experience than the other Jury members present. A field of experience refers to the specialisation of profession or academic subject.
  17. Each Jury member must be present for all team presentations in their entirety.
  18. The Jury must use the official TIMES evaluation forms when evaluating teams.
  19. Each team must receive individual feedback from the Jury.
  20. When there are multiple cases, the points from the individual cases are scaled in the way that the team with the highest score gets ten points. The other teams get a relative score compared to the winning team of the day. Scaled points from all the individual cases are summed, and the team with the most scaled points wins the competition.
  21. There must not be any indication of scores and rankings of individual teams until the final results of the competition are announced.