Leadership at Georgia Tech’s Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISyE), its Supply Chain & Logistics Institute (SCL) and the Physical Internet Center, along with DINALOG (the Dutch Institute for Advanced Logistics), and the Flemish Institute for Logistics (VIL) gathered together on October 6, 2015 to formalize a collaborative working relationship by signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU).

This joint collaboration will leverage common goals and interests in logistics to further enhance academic research, technological innovation, and knowledge dissemination in hyper-connected logistics.

With this new collaborations, ISyE and SCL continue to expand their global outreach in the field of supply chain and logistics. They are already working with affiliated international centers and programs in Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama, and Singapore.

“If we are to assist in making supply chains more efficient and reliable, it is important to understand logistics from an international perspective,” said Edwin Romeijn, ISyE School Chair.  “And by working with DINALOG and VIL, we continue to expand our network to improve logistics performance worldwide.”

 ISyE’s Physical Internet Center catalyzes and leads projects in collaboration with scientific, industrial, and governmental partners from around the world, enabled by its new leading-edge Physical Internet lab.

DINALOG is the national institute responsible for the execution of the innovation program of the Dutch focus sector logistics. Within DINALOG, around approximately 300 organizations (logistics service providers, port authorities, shippers and knowledge institutions) work together in open innovation to advance logistics and supply chain management. Currently, many Dutch professors perform joint research projects with professors at Georgia Tech, particularly associated to SCL and the Physical Internet Center.

The third signer of this MOU is VIL, an open innovation platform for the logistics industry. Approximately 500 companies (shippers, carriers, logistics services providers, and port authorities) are members of VIL. With public funding by the government of Flanders in Belgium, VIL along with Flemish member companies perform logistics innovation projects to increase their member companies’ competitiveness.

As part of this mutual cooperation, the signees have agreed to:

• A grant scheme for Ph.D. candidates and post-doctoral researchers that will enable research visits to knowledge institutes in The Netherlands, Belgium, and at Georgia Tech.
• A jointly organized seminar for researchers and practitioners in all three countries on the subject of "Towards virtual ports in a physical internet.”
• A jointly organized International Physical Internet Conference in 2017 or 2018 hosted by the University of Groningen.
• As well as to foster other jointly developed projects and associated grant proposals.

Dutch Signers:

Liesbeth Staps-Brügemann, M.Sc., deputy director DINALOG

Iris Vis, Ph.D., on behalf of DINALOG, professor of Industrial Engineering, University of Groningen

Flemish Signer:

Francis Rome, Ph.D., Director External Relations VIL and professor of Supply Chain Management of Antwerp University

U.S. A. Signers:

Benoit Montreuil, Ph.D., P.E., Director of the Physical Internet Center, Coca-Cola Chair in Material Handling & Distribution, Professor, H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

Edwin Romeijn, Ph.D., School Chair and Professor of the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

Martin Savelsbergh, Ph.D., James C. Edenfield and Professor, H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology