TKI Dinalog, Georgia Tech and the VIL sign MoU

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 TKI 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.

Physical Internet Center
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. Currently, many Dutch professors perform joint research projects with professors at Georgia Tech, particularly associated to SCL and the Physical Internet Center.

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.

Physical Internet

The Physical Internet is an open global logistics system founded on physical, digital, and operational interconnectivity, through encapsulation, interfaces and protocols. The Physical Internet is intended to replace current logistical models. This vision involves encapsulating goods in smart, ecofriendly and modular containers ranging from the size of a maritime container to the size of a small box. The first Dutch Physical Internet project will start this January: “Towards virtual ports in a physical internet”.