Georgia Tech, MIT create Panama institutes aimed at helping improve human, infrastructure capacity in Latin America.
Georgia Tech’s Supply Chain and Logistics Institute in early September opened a Logistics Innovation and Research Center in Panama to help the government turn the Central American nation into a top-flight intercontinental trade hub.
Not to be outdone, the Center for Transportation & Logistics (CTL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology opened a Center for Latin American Logistics Innovation in Bogotá, Colombia in 2008 and has interest in setting up a logistics university in Panama too, school officials say. Both are considered among the top educational and research institutions in the logistics field.
Panama is in the midst of a $5.25 billion expansion of the Panama Canal that will allow much larger cargo vessels and tankers to transit the narrow isthmus. But the government’s ambitions are to leverage that traffic and its central location to become a regional trade and logistics hub. Panama already has container ports on either end of the canal and the Colon Free Trade Zone, and new ports are on the drawing board, as is expansion of the Panama Pacifico logistics park at the former Howard Air Force Base.
Logistics experts say that despite Panama’s physical assets it lacks the high level of integration necessary for trade-hub status, citing a shortage of logistics services and supporting infrastructure such as public warehousing, temperature controlled facilities, logistics technology, and experienced logisticians.
Panama is ranked 51st in logistics performance by the World Bank, and officials at both universities say they want to put Panama on par with countries such as Singapore, Dubai and the Netherlands that help make shippers’ supply chains more competitive. “They are turning it from a highway that just goes through to a highway with on-and-off ramps,” CTL Director Yossi Sheffi said during a keynote address to the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals conference in San Diego on Sept. 28.
In an interview, Sheffi said the Center for Transportation & Logistics is eager to develop a logistics university for the Panamanian government that would be somewhat similar to one it established in 2003 along with the University of Zaragoza and the government of Aragon in Spain. The Zaragoza Logistics Center sits in the middle of PLAZA -- Europe’s largest logistics park -- giving students access to a working laboratory to try out new logistics processes, technologies and concepts along with other academic institutions and companies.
Whether MIT sets up a logistics campus in the Central American nation still is an open question after both sides decided to slow down initial talks until more preconditions for an agreement are in place, CTL Executive Director Chris Caplice said.
The Panama logistics center likely will offer masters and doctoral programs, as well as executive-level education courses leading to certificates in various logistics-related disciplines modeled on MIT’s own coursework. It will also actively engage with corporations on logistics projects.
The CTL wants to cooperate with the Panama Canal Authority, Copa Airlines, the nation’s two major logistics parks, marine terminal operators and other entities in Panama, Sheffi said. “Our feeling is that you can’t be a world-class logistics cluster without a research center and educational activity because in addition to commercial operations you want to encourage innovation, entrepreneurship and new knowledge creation. “So you become not only a commercial hub, but a knowledge hub for the hemisphere,” he said.
The primary difference with Georgia Tech’s program is that MIT would create an indigenous Panamanian institution and a PhD program, not an MIT offshoot, instead of a masters program that caters to Panamanian students and sends students to the United States for a semester. Under the Georgia Tech model “the knowledge doesn’t stay in Panama. The students come and many of them will never return to Panama. We’re trying to create a center where people from all over the world will come to study in Panama and stay in Panama. And even if they don’t stay in Panama, they’ll always be tied to Panama,” Sheffi said. “We want to create the reverse brain drain,” he added, pointing to the number of Panamanians that study abroad.
Building a whole logistics university from scratch takes longer than partnering with existing schools. But once a deal is struck there will be seminars, conferences and executive courses that are not tied to the academic year until classes start.
The CTL will bring prospective professors to MIT for training and provide a lot of the content, but the degree will come from the university in Panama, he added. The plan is for MIT to shepherd the logistics center for 10 years and then turn it over to Panama, leaving behind a peer to the CTL.
Malaysia. Meanwhile, MIT officials have signed a contract with the Malaysian government to establish a logistics university in Kuala Lumpur. This learning center will more closely resemble the Zaragoza model, with a full program of education, corporate outreach and research. A Panamanian university, by contrast, will focus on education and corporate partnerships. A University of Zaragoza masters degree is the equivalent of one from MIT, but in Colombia and Panama students get a certificate that can be used for credit at partner universities.
Together the spinoff institutions comprise what CTL officials call the Global Supply Chain and Logistics Excellence (SCALE) Network. The arrangement allows faculty, researchers, students and affiliated companies to pool their expertise and collaborate on joint research, education and consulting.
Students from overseas branches come to MIT for three weeks and then all go to Zaragoza for one week to participate in mixed team simulations, interactive leadership sessions and exercises designed to expose them to different types of people and cultures they will deal with in their professional life, Caplice said. “We’re finding that the multinationals are very interested in this for both recruiting and for research,” he said.
One of the projects CTL is working on in Latin America is to create a logistics application for the Android phone because smart phones act as low-cost computers and emerging countries have such strong cellular networks, he added. CTL officials eventually plan to expand the SCALE network to Africa, India, Europe and China.