Amar Ramudhin, director of Supply Chain Management and Technology at the Georgia Tech Supply Chain & Logistics Institute (SCL), was invited to give a keynote address to commemorate 20 years of industrial engineering education at Monterrey Tech in Mexico City, Mexico on July 5, 2011.   Dr. Ramudhin spoke on the global challenges of industrial engineering, the importance of industrial engineering, the relevance of higher education related to this career, as well as its importance for companies and for the development of countries like Mexico.

After the keynote address, Jaymie Forrest, managing director of SCL, introduced an alliance between Georgia Tech’s SCL and Monterrey Tech by announcing the recent launch of the Trade and Logistics Innovation Center located at the Santa Fe campus.  The primary objective of the Center is to increase competitive advantage through improved logistics performance, develop industry through innovation and use of technology, and develop human capital through logistics education.

The opening of this center follows on the hills of two other Latin American initiatives established by SCL in the past couple of years, the Trade Innovation and Productivity Center in San Jose, Costa Rica and the Georgia Tech Panama Logistics Innovation and Research Center in Panama City, Panama.  SCL’s goal in establishing this network of centers is to leverage innovation and technology to promote and improve trade and, ultimately to increase productivity and economic growth. It will also help Georgia Tech researchers understand issues involving international trade and create innovative solutions to logistics and supply chain problems.

Amar Ramudhin has over 25 years of experience in the design and management of supply chains for both the manufacturing and service industries. His interest in helping organizations better organize, align and manage their processes led to the development of UMN®, a new business process modeling paradigm that allows the composite and collaborative modeling of an enterprise's business processes and support for process improvement, resource optimization, process integration and process management. In the past, Dr. Ramudhin has held senior positions with companies such as CAPS Logistics and Baan and has served on the faculty of Laval University and École de Technologie Supérieure. He received his Ph.D from the Georgia Institute of Technology and is also the president of BlueSail Solutions.

Jaymie Forrest has over 20 years experience in supply chain management as a consultant, technology executive, and as an educator. Prior to joining SCL as executive vice president and consultant with Neogistics, a supply chain engineering firm specializing in supply chain management and decision technologies, she has been engaged in a variety of supply chain projects with over 100 clients worldwide and offices in US, Mexico, and Argentina. Her expertise includes strategic network design, supply chain management technologies, and distribution execution strategies as well as system design for a variety of unique custom logistics system and integration projects. She holds a BS in Industrial Management (1989) from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an MBA specialized in Decision Science/Operations Management (1995) from Georgia State University, as well as earned Certification in International Marketing at the American University in Paris, France (1987).