Wabash and Purdue are teaming up to create a Midwest super hub for logistics research
Excerpted from the July 2024 issue of University-Industry Engagement Advisor. UIDP members can view the entire issue here.
While the Smart Crossroads Research Consortium at Purdue University rightly includes the school’s imprimatur, the idea for it was fully conceived in the private sector by transportation and distribution company Wabash, which encouraged its cohort of industry partners to join forces with the university to create a Midwest super hub for logistics research.
The Consortium is a case study in cultivating a large-scale research consortium by applying the tools of an ambitious start-up company.
Brent Yeagy, president and CEO of Wabash, says that the logistics industry now finds itself in need of a comprehensive, yet focused, response.
“The problems that logistics face right now are daunting,” he says. “We’ve got technology that is advancing at a ridiculous pace. You’ve got artificial intelligence. You’ve got alternative energy. Companies are really struggling with how to change their business models that go with it, and those are long-term, big, complex problems. And it takes a university like Purdue, with all of its capabilities, to really help them answer those questions. Obviously, Wabash wants to be part of solving tomorrow’s problems. But we also want to solve the decade problems, the things that are going to take five or 10 years to figure out.”
“We’ve always had close ties with Purdue, just with the number of engineers that we hire from the university,” Yeagy says. “But when I became CEO in 2018, we had a change in strategy and direction in terms of how we were going to embark upon innovation going forward, to enlarge it, to accelerate it, and to be more visionary in the way that we look to make changes in the markets in which we’re active. And that required a new relationship with Purdue and a deeper commitment.”
This effort had to encompass technological solutions on Horizon 1 (near-term), Horizon 2 (mid-term), and Horizon 3 (long-term) scales. And, for that to be all possible, Purdue had to be involved.
Yeagy sought to build an ecosystem with the companies in Wabash’s orbit — other transportation fleets, third-party logistics companies, retail shippers, suppliers, and developers of telematics and autonomous vehicles.
The result? Smart Crossroads is the nucleus of the broader logistics hub envisioned by Wabash.
“We brought in a large number of technology players and logistics players just based off our own relationships,” Yeagy says. “And then Purdue brought a set of relationships together as we convened this group. And that’s why we talk about linking our ecosystems together. It’s more than what any one group can do by themselves. When you start pooling the ecosystems of multiple players, that’s how you create powerful innovations. You add ideas, you add assets, and you add capabilities beyond what any one, or even two, parties can do.”