In the last week before the Christmas holidays, we (the MGM students) got served the Goldstein Brewery case. A case in which we had exactly 72 hours to tackle the problems the Goldstein Brewery is facing. 72 hours of hard work, little sleep and lots of bad humor. We were divided into groups of 4 and the end goal was to present a 100 days action plan to the board of directors, that consisted out of Vlerick professors Ann Vereecke and Robert Boute, supported by Koen Cobbaert (Director at PWC) and Koen Van der Taelen (Chief Supply Chain Officer at Duvel Moortgat).

As the title of this blog post reveals: We were again allowed to go to campus to tackle the Goldstein Brewery Case, this of course under strict safety measures. Nevertheless, it was wonderful to spend these 72 hours in the motivating atmosphere of the Vlerick Campus,  sensing the same levels of tension and business at the other teams.

The case started Monday morning with a plenary meeting in our beloved yellow room on Zoom. We received the general objectives of the case and some initial data that could help us to do a first ‘quick and dirty’ data-analysis. The goal of the first day was to identify the major issues at the Goldstein Brewery and to make an action-plan of how we would further quantify these issues. The main financial ratio that we would use to quantify our issues was the ROCE or Return on Capital Employed. The only thing that went on in the heads of an MGM student during those 72 hours was the ROCE. Some of us hung it on their walls, some wrote it on a whiteboard and some even had dreams about it.

The second day was all about using company data to uncover the issues and to quantify the impact on the ROCE. To help us with the data-analysis, we were supported by a tool that was designed by PWC, namely Equazion. At 9 am, when we got access to tool, the race against the clock began. The following 48 hours were filled with Excel sheets, bad jokes, burnouts, stressful moments and lots of Deliveroo (because of course, we did not had the time to prepare food ourselves).

On Thursday 3 am (5.5 hours before the deadline), the MGM-Ghent group chat was still on fire. Most of the groups were finetuning their presentations, while the deadline came closer and closer. By the time most groups finished and got to bed, there was not a lot of room left for sleep.  That morning, fueled by coffee and adrenaline, everybody delivered a great presentation. At noon the Goldstein Brewery case was closed by a plenary debrief. The jury members were impressed by the level of professionality of our presentations and the quality of the analyses! Four groups out of twenty-two were elected as winners, and will receive a nice prize from Duvel Moortgat.

We’re sure that this case was the icing on the cake of our first semester. We were challenged to perform under significant time pressure, while putting everything we have learnt so far into action. Right now, we all need to reload our minds and take a small break from Vlerick. Sadly enough, going on a little trip is not possible this year, but the lovely Belgium will certainly do for now!

We’re looking forward to more on-campus moments in 2021!

Wishing you a happy, healthy & satisfactory new year!

Bart & Delphine