CELDi IAB Members,

Olivier Cadet (IAB Chair) and I hope you enjoyed the CELDi video where we attempted to express our enthusiasm with CELDi and its move from “good to great.”  We thought we’d utilize video to hit the highlights of the CELDi Retreat and this document will provide the context.

As part of our strategic planning update process, I organized a retreat for a cross section of CELDi.  Most of the Directors, Kelley, our NSF evaluator Otto, Olivier and another IAB member met over four days in Colorado in July to revisit our strategic plan, strategize on our upcoming renewal proposal to NSF, and to work out the details of a new operations model. 

We’ll be reporting on the major outcomes of the Retreat in Chicago (Oct. 19-20), but we wanted to get the word out about a few, key highlights of our time in Colorado.

• Collaboration on projects:  we are very excited about a new framework for project collaboration where IAB members have a pathway for “adding onto” an existing project in a general area in which they are interested, bringing their current university partner with them to maintain the focus on implementable solutions that provide a return on investment.
  
  
• Knowledge management:  over the past few years we have realized that CELDi is in the knowledge management business.  Unfortunately, we are not experts in this area.  With the investment of the IAB in a knowledge management project from the pooled research fund, we are going to expand upon this in Chicago by bringing in an expert to help.  We will include the IAB to see what you can directly take back to your own organization.  
  
  
• Investing in our students:  sometimes a cliché really is true … the students are our future.  And we have even more ways in which we can invest in them through CELDi.  The Retreat provided us with a chance to reflect on activities and student investment initiatives.

We hope that you will come away from Chicago as excited as we are about CELDi and its future as a university-based enterprise providing innovative solutions for logistics and distribution excellence with our member organizations.

As always, drop us a line if we can do anything to help you get more out of your CELDi membership.

See you in Chicago!
Russ

For more information about our work
in logistics and distribution, please visit

http://www.celdi.org/ or phone 479-575-2124

CELDi is an NSF I/UCRC