This master was created in 2005 after a meeting with a professional of the transport sector who brought to the fore the actual needs of firms, who desire to develop their activity at an international level, to have executives with a major knowledge in logistics, but also in foreign languages and a sound culture of international exchanges.

As the search for this profile of partners with double skills did not correspond with no postgraduate of schools or any logistics traning, I decided to create a training content suited by focusing on the skills of the LEA department (University of Nantes, International Center of Languages) and on a network of professionals from the logistics sector via the ALSOG and its regional representative Bruno Durand with who I created this new master. The model of this new diploma was well welcomed by the Education Minister and we opened the first class in September, 2005 with few competitors on this profile "Languages and Logistics" because only the University of Lille proposed such a master in France.

Two years passed and a first promotion has just been graduated in September, 2006 and I have to admit that this bet of combining foreign languages and logistics paid off regarding very goods figures of professional integration: only 6 months later 90 % of the graduated have found a job in the logistics sector, and for some of them in foreign firms.

The future of this training is based on 2 main lines : (1) the opening for new languages (Chinese for example from September, 2008) and (2) the development of partnership with geo-political- strategics universities for the international logistics area as for example Cairo in Egypt.

Francky Trichet
Lecturer in Computing
Investigator at the LINA (Laboratoire d'Informatique de Nantes Atlantique - FRE-CNRS 2729)