This paper examines the results of an international team-based operations management assignment that runs between two universities. The work shows the benefits of giving students a taste of real-life operations management problems both from a technical point of view as well as the challenges faced when working to short timescales, with unfamiliar team players and across time zones. The work has generated valuable understanding of the approach required to set up such inter-institution assignments. It has enabled a process model to be developed to allow others to extract the key stages required for setting up and running them.