Supply Chain Frontiers issue #44
Since it was launched three years ago, the Graduate Certificate in Logistics and Supply Chain Management (GCLOG) has raised the supply chain education bar in Latin America both in terms of student quality and academic standards. It has also bolstered research in the field, with projects as diverse as studies of mega-city logistics and sustainability in the Galapagos Islands. The next step is to expand the program across Latin America and perhaps the world.
GCLOG is the flagship program of the Center for Latin-American Logistics Innovation (CLI). CLI, based in Bogotá, Colombia, became a member of the MIT Global SCALE Network in 2008. The most extensive, non-formal education program of its kind in Latin America, the GCLOG program is open to top-performing students in universities that are a part of the CLI academic network. Twenty-three universities are currently network members.
The program is central to CLI’s ground-breaking model for improving supply chain education and research across this vast region. Basically, this entails drawing students from a regional network of academic institutions to study a curriculum co-designed by the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics (MIT CTL).
According to Dr. Edgar Blanco, Executive Director, MIT SCALE Network, Latin America, and a Research Director at MIT CTL, the model has been particularly successful on two counts.
First, it has provided an environment in which capable students can thrive. “Seeing this in action has provided one of the big learnings for us,” notes Blanco. “We select students from our partner universities who already come with the basic tools; they just need the motivation and guidance to excel. We have received very positive feedback from global companies that interact with our students as part of their program.”
The second success story is that GCLOG has met its goal to “upgrade the universities in Latin American countries and help them develop better programs in supply chain management,” Blanco says. The process is essentially a positive feedback loop; excellent graduates encourage more top students to enroll, and the intake of high performers pushes universities to provide improved programs. “We now have students who have applied to member universities only because they want to secure access to the GCLOG program,” he says.
An important component of the academic relationship with CLI Academic Partners is the opportunity to participate in research. In addition to being exposed to cutting-edge projects, many students in the region get to work in multi-national teams.
Take, for example, two current projects that span several countries. A project to study logistics challenges in the world’s largest cities involves students from the University of São Paulo in Brazil and MIT CTL in the United States. “Ultimately we want to develop an overview of mega-city logistics applied in different parts of the world, including the cities of Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Santiago, and São Paulo,” Blanco explains. Efforts are underway to include researchers from Mexico and Chile.
Another project is building on a recently completed thesis on sustainable supply chains in the Galapagos Islands. The tourist industry in the islands requires supplies such as fuel and food products, and a transportation system. The research looked at the impact of these demands on the environmental performance of supporting supply chains. Further work tied to undergraduate student research in Ecuador is underway, as well as related projects such as a joint paper with the San Francisco de Quito University, Ecuador.
In future, the GCLOG community will have access to an even wider pool of academic resources. Students from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico are already part of the network. This year students in Chile, Ecuador, and Peru are scheduled to become participants, and the ultimate goal is to have academic programs from 13 Latin American countries represented in the network.
These additions will bring a wider variety of students and universities, and richer opportunities for collaborative research. “Interactions with other universities in the region help us to understand the different national environments and realities, and to identify new ideas for research,” says Dr. Cláudio Barbieri da Cunha, Associate Professor, Center for Innovation in Logistics Systems, University of São Paulo, Brazil.
This continued expansion begs the question: should the GCLOG program be limited to Latin America? If the model has worked so effectively in the region, there is good reason to believe that it can be adapted to other geographies across the globe.
“Perhaps we can design a certificate program based on what we have learned in Latin America for other parts of the world,” says Blanco.
For more information on the GCLOG program contact Dr. Edgar Blanco. If you would like to contribute to an on-going study on factors that drive the design of supply chain networks in Latin America, please fill out a short survey by going to: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/L6MWHXK. The results of the survey will be available this fall, as part of a GCLOG capstone project.