Supply Chain Management

Prof. Dr. Albert Veenstra new scientific director at Dinalog

On 1 October 2014, prof. dr. Albert Veenstra was appointed scientific director at Dinalog.

Veenstra has been involved with Dinalog for a considerable time, as a project leader for the R&D project Ultimate for example. Albert Veenstra succeeds Prof. dr. Henk Zijm, who will remain involved with Dinalog in the role of scientific adviser.

Willem Heeren, chairman of the board, announced on behalf of Dinalog that the institute was saying farewell to Henk Zijm with pain in its heart. But that Dinalog is very happy to have found a worthy successor in the person of Albert Veenstra, who has a splendid national and international track record. Veenstra worked until October 1 as a senior business consultant at TNO, department of Sustainable Transport and Logistics.  He combines his work at Dinalog with his position as professor of International Trade Facilitation and Logistics at the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e).

As a consultant and scientist, Veenstra is involved in a large number of projects in the Netherlands, Europe, Brazil and China in the field of market development, fleet development, information management in supply chains and logistics and the development of synchromodal networks in the hinterland. Good examples are the European project Cassandra, the Dinalog project Ultimate and various projects in the IDVV program. As a project leader for the European project Integrity, he has worked on solutions to improve the safety of global container transport.

Veenstra has broad educational experience. For both universities and companies (executive level) he has developed courses in supply chain management and logistics.

Veenstra is a member of various advisory committees for the EU and the Dutch government. In this capacity, he has been involved in the execution of the roadmap Synchromodality for the Topsector Logistics.

Dinalog plays a central role in the Top sector Logistics, especially in the design and execution of the research agenda and the decision-making around the research projects in the Top consortium for Knowledge and Innovation (TKI) for the logistics sector. As scientific director, Veenstra will hold a key position and, for this reason, he will join the Program Committee for TKI Logistics from 1 October. For the research agenda, it is his ambition to seek intensive contact with many companies that together form the world of logistics in the Netherlands. In addition, he will be involved in the driving and development of research projects, and responsible for maintaining the research and innovation agenda for the Top sector Logistics.

Henk Zijm, too, always combined his job as scientific director at Dinalog with his position as professor at the University of Twente. He had previously indicated that the, by now, four years of combining a full-time position as professor with that of scientific director at Dinalog was becoming too heavy a burden for him. Now that the TKI policy and the role of Dinalog in this are starting to take shape, he considered it an appropriate moment to pass on the baton. He will continue in the capacity of an adviser for Dinalog. He is currently still the vice chairman for the European Technology Platform for Logistics ALICE (Alliance for Logistics Innovation and Cooperation in Europe) and chairman of the Program Committee for TKI Logistics, but he will also terminate these positions in the long term, so that he can concentrate completely on his position as professor at the University of Twente. He will continue to fulfil a number of existing additional posts.

During the last four years, Henk Zijm has focused on the expansion of the Dinalog Research and Development program, in which more than 30 major projects are currently running (without exception as public private consortia). He was responsible for the expansion and support of a number of Human Capital Development programs. He has championed the image of Dutch knowledge and industrial sectors throughout Europe. Dinalog participates in, or is the project leader for, a significant number of European projects and is joint initiator of the European Technology Platform ALICE, in which European knowledge institutes and companies work together in shaping the European logistics research agenda within Horizon 2020. He has promoted the strengthening of relationships with comparable foreign institutes, like Zarogoza Logistics Center (Spain), the Fraunhofer Institut für Materialfluβ und Logistik (Germany), the Nov@Log cluster (France) and the Logistics Park Nässjö (Sweden). Recently, upon his initiative, a cooperative agreement was signed between Dinalog and the Effizienzcluster Logistik/Ruhr in Dortmund, in the presence of King Willem Alexander and Queen Maxima.

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