Collaboration between academia and industry is not the norm in Latin America. This happens even though many academic programs require a period of working experience to obtain a degree. The concern is that work experiences both at the undergraduate and graduate levels are not sufficiently posed as technical problem-solving endeavors. It is important, then, to disseminate stories of successful cases in Latin-American countries as well as to describe how these could be marshaled. In this manuscript, two working schemes geared to build such liaison are described in detail. One of them relates to a systems engineering/operations research practicum program at the graduate level in Mexico and the second one discusses an industrial engineering experience at undergraduate level in Colombia. Difficulties on the development of these programs and how they were overcome are discussed for each case.