News

A massive cyclone has hit Karachi, Pakistan, devastating the coastal city. Oil fires are raging in the city’s port and another storm will hit the region in two weeks.

Thankfully, this nightmare disaster scenario is not real, but rather was a crisis simulation that occurred on March 16 testing the abilities of Air Force Reserve Officers Training Core (ROTC) Detachment 365 and members of Alliance Linking Leaders in Education and the Services (ALLIES).

Carriers and shippers can work together to bring about efficiencies in trucking and mitigate the cost of fuel surcharges, says Professor Chris Caplice.

MIT's Center for Transportation and Logistics has always served an interesting role somewhere between academia and the private sector. I've come to think of it as a more academic version of AMR Research (in fact, executives have moved between the two organizations). Most recently in Supply Chain Digest Chris Caplice, Executive Director of the Center, chimed in with his supply chain predictions for 2010. I'll quote a few here and provide my own commentary, but I'd suggest reading the entire column if you have a minute.

Dr. Chris Caplice Executive Director MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics

Universities and Educational Institutions with Supply Chain Education Programs

The Next Billion Network, selected for the Cooper-Hewitt's Design Triennial exhibition, features NextLab projects created in partnership with the MIT Media Lab. NextLab founder and instructor Jhonatan Rotberg is currently a lecturer in MIT Engineering Systems Division and now presides over NextLab 2.0, the next generation of this program, in partnership with Dr. Edgar Blanco, executive director of the MIT Center for Latin American Logistics Innovation. Nextlab 2.0 is being hosted at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics....

Madison, NJ (January 2010) - MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics (MIT CTL) has now identified Damco's carbon management approach as potentially up to 25% more accurate than other approaches....

In February, Yadav and his team also received a $500,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to compare drug forecasting by nonprofit groups with similar efforts in the pharmaceutical industry. Yadav also instigated a two-year work-study program for representatives from the health ministries of developing countries to come to the center in Spain and improve their skills at managing supply chains. “You can’t have good global forecasts unless individual countries can forecast their demands well,” Yadav says.

Transplace, a leading provider of transportation management services and logistics technology solutions, partnered with Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Transportation & Logistics (MIT − CTL) to conduct an education workshop focused on scenario planning. The customized course of study, conducted December 3, assembled more than 35 Transplace customers on the MIT campus to gain insight with the purpose of furthering business strategies and to spur learning around scenario planning....

If there is one lesson we can draw from the natural disasters and terrorist attacks that shocked the international community over the past year, it is that calamities will continue to happen and organizations need to be resilient enough to withstand and learn from unexpected disruptions....

Across industries, centers of excellence pinpoint and develop the technologies and best practices that companies need to do what they do better.

Rotberg Brings Smartphones to Developing World

It is an unlikely medical device: a sleek smartphone more suited to a nightclub than a rural health clinic. But it is loaded with software that allows health workers in the remote northernmost Philippines province of Batanes to dramatically reduce the time it takes to get X-rays to a radiologist — and to get a diagnosis for a patient being tested for tuberculosis....

MIT project leads to programs that help health workers, farmers in developing countries

Your next vehicle might automatically check your pulse, help with steering—and tell you to put down your cellphone

Tough economic times are forcing many businesses to make substantial budget cuts.

Sales & Operations Planning - a structured process of helping balance demand and supply - is beneficial conditions.

Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar are by nature intermittent and located far away from consumer demand. Given these constraints, there is an urgent need for new supply chain solutions that enable governments and power companies to deliver renewable energy cost-effectively to consumers. Dr. Jarrod Goentzel’s new white paper describes the challenges and research at the MIT-Zaragoza Program that is developing some answers.

In the year 2000, the Government of the Autonomous Community of Arag n, Spain, made public a project for the development of a large-scale logistics park in the outskirts of the city of Zaragoza. With an area of nearly 13 square kilometers, PLAZA (an acronym for Zaragoza Logistics Platform) would be by far the largest logistics park either built or under development in all of Europe.

Each year, World Trade Magazine selects the top 50 organizations, places and people whose efforts make the global supply chain more sustainable.  The MIT Global SCALE Network is on the 2008 list.

In the March 23 Boston Globe, AgeLab Director Joe Coughlin discusses AgeLab's research on designing products that fit the needs of the world's fast-aging population.