MHI and CICMHE host Teachers Institute and Future Faculty Symposium

MHI and the College-Industry Council for Material Handling Education (CICMHE) recently hosted the 2015 Material Handling Teachers Institute and Future Faculty Symposium in Madison, Wisc.

The event is designed to provide new and upcoming professors of material handling, logistics and supply chain with an opportunity to learn best practices from established educators in their field. It also offers networking and professional development for educators and provides information and knowledge they can apply to their future curriculum.

The event also featured tours of the American Girl Distribution Center, Target Distribution Center, Harley-Davidson Powertrain Operations, and Electronic Theatre Controls.

The host was the University of Wisconsin – Madison and the academic chair was Dr. Ananth Krishnamurthy, associate professor in the department of Industrial Systems and Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Director for the Center for Quick Response Manufacturing.

Fourteen speakers presented on a variety of topics including Automatic Identification, Supply Chain Management Concepts, and Design, Implementation, and Optimization of Data Collection Systems in Warehouse Environments.

The event had 31 total attendees including 22 professors from Universities in the U.S, Chile, Colombia, Israel, Norway, Peru,  and Taiwan. Also, for the first time, nine Ph.D. students attend as part of the Future Faculty Symposium from various Universities throughout the USA.

Additional event highlights:

● Chuck Nemer from The Fresh Connection and Daniel Stanton (MHI) introduced participants to “The Beer Game,” a role play simulation game that lets players experience typical coordination problems of traditional supply chains, in which information sharing and collaboration does not exist.
● Symbotic LLC prepared and executed a week long case study where participants worked in teams throughout the week and presented their solutions to Symbotic.
● New this year: A LinkedIn Group was created for participants to “meet” and network prior to the start of the event and will continue on as a platform for participants to share how their applications of the skills learned have helped them (best practice sharing).

The next Material Handling Teachers Institute and Future Faculty Symposium will take place in the summer of 2017 at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon.