Simon is the Vice-President and Head of Innovation at Airbus’ Security Office, reporting directly to the Chief Security Office. Simon represents Airbus on a number of key European boards and stakeholder groups, including The Charter of Trust. The biggest success in Simon’s career to date was his involvement in the launch of Airbus’ new research and innovation centers globally – which included new R&D hubs in the UK, Russia, China, India, Singapore and the US. He sees the biggest opportunity for manufacturing industry as getting digitalisation right to enhance speed to market, cost reduction and efficiency. 

Paul is Chief Digital Officer within the PowderMetallurgy division of GKN with a team of 70 people globally. His biggest career success is the development of the industry 4.0 strategy for his division which he has been an integral part of. Paul believes the biggest opportunity for the manufacturing industry is data. To date, manufacturers have focused on product, machine and assets which is the core of the business and allows access to data sources. Now it is vital companies make the data visible and transparent, finding the value and resulting in improvements and new business models, new service models – what everybody needs to succeed in industry 4.0 and a create new realm for manufacturing. 

Janine has over 20 years' experience in Business Transformation & Change Management within several technical companies, currently leading a team at GKN within their Aerospace division. Janine is passionate about improving business performance through people and their organisational processes and structures, especially the connection between performance, processes and people, strategy, cultural behavior and organisational dynamics. Janine focuses on bringing organisations, teams and people together to lead change and align results with business perspectives. Janine is also a keen advocate for developing women in manufacturing and supports this initiative in her work. 

Lloyd is a Director within the manufacturing and engineering division globally, with a team of 40 heads across the analytics, data and fundamental problem solving teams. His biggest career success to date is the recent completion of an enterprise licensing agreement for analytics software that they co-developed with the developers. This started as an idea in 2011 and they now have a global license and process of development and data testing, a huge milestone for the team at Dow. Lloyd sees the biggest opportunity in the manufacturing industry is the change in corporate culture. How we do tasks today and what Industry 4.0 implements in changing tasks will improve bottom line and influence a culture that is traditionally change adverse. 

Curtis sits within the Defence & Space division of Airbus and has a team c50 globally. His biggest career success to date is taking innovative, challenging topics and finding the mechanism to bridge and bring them to life in the ‘real’ operational world. Curtis has implemented augmented reality within Airbus, was at the forefront of 3D printing at Airbus Commercial and has been involved in bringing IoT, Automation and Connectivity to the forefront of the business, developing them from cutting edge, complex topics in the R&D phase to being used in the business operationally. He sees the biggest opportunity in manufacturing as how to capitalize and capture the knowledge and information that companies have don’t exploit. 

Stefano currently sits within the material handling division, leading in developing and providing logistics solutions to Toyota’s end customer and he has a team of 10 across Italy. His great success is to lead the lean transformation in the Italian branch of Toyota and he sees the biggest opportunities in the industry as lean application and digitalisation to improve the wide range of products on offer and short lead times, as well as additive manufacturing which he thinks will change the process inside the plant and bring a huge revolution.  

Joachim Romann is a Senior Digital Process Development Engineer, sitting within the Foods & Refreshment division of Unilever. He works in the global R&D Processing team and heads up the digital transformation for Savory Processing as well as working in a cross-category team on pilot projects with Unilever’s Digital R&D and IT teams. He sees the biggest opportunity in manufacturing as the digital end-to-end (E2E) product development and integrated upscaling between R&D and Supply Chain.

 Jens sits within the IT division of the business where he is Functional Chief Designer, responsible for the design, planning and development of the overall Manufacturing Execution System (MES) across the VW Group (Internationally). His biggest career successes are designing and  implementing a new logistics system and designing a production system for the Lotus car manufacturer in UK. He sees the biggest opportunity across manufacturing as the smart manufacturing as it gives companies the tools to producing innovatively (e.g. using 3D printing in the plant) and become fully automated.

Sama sits within the Technology Factory Division of Daimler and has been newly appointed as responsible for the simulation of manufacturing load cases for all car lines projects. He has more than 15 years deep dive experience in innovation, intelligent engineering methods and processes as well as simulation. Sama is an expert in digitalization technologies (AI, Big Data, Robotics, VR/AR, IoT) and related used cases such as Digital product & process twins, predictive/prescriptive tasks, manufacturing execution systems and new business models. As a coach & trainer for agility, he is passionate about digital leadership, agile mindset, agile methods and transforming organisations and processes to become more agile.

Jens sits within the manufacturing and engineering division of 25,000, heads with a team of 60 people within the Manufacturing 4.0 division globally. The biggest success in Jens’ career has been the ability to solve technical issues worth $200 million for Dow, finding ways to make technology work that doesn’t want to work. He sees the biggest opportunity in the manufacturing industry as getting to the next level of performance. Without the tools and technology of industry 4.0, manufacturers have reached the limit of what can be achieved in terms of operational excellence. Industry 4.0 is opening up allowing manufacturing to break through the barrier and improve processes.

Fabio is the Chief Digital Officer at Braskem, and heads up Braskem's Digital Center. The Digital Center is a global multidisciplinary team comprising of: data scientists, developers, UX/UI designers, agile coaches, innovation experts, and much more. The Digital Center drives the transformation agenda of Braskem and accelerates the development and implementation of the latest digital technologies around the globe, including: artificial intelligence, augmented reality, blockchain, IoT / Industry 4.0, or anything under the digital umbrella. Fabio also heads up the incubation arm of Braskem, where new ventures/businesses are created and built to tackle today’s key disruptive trends globally. These include: circular economy, recycling, mobility, sharing economy, 3D printing / digital manufacturing, smart cities, and others.

Kalman has over 35 year experience in using information technology for business process innovation. He merged IT and Business in a new department called Business Innovation through IT (BI²T) and managed to promote the collaboration between IT and Business as driving force behind innovation.  With his team he has successfully implemented a flawless IT infrastructure with flexible applications, using microservices architecture, turning TVH into a real-time, extended enterprise. He is also heading up a new start-up company inside of the TVH Group, which  focuses on the collection and processing of machine generated data, building a new platform based digital business model around predictive maintenance. He was named IT Manager of the Year’ – Large Organizations in 2004 and 2011 by Leading European Trade Publication, Data News.

His biggest success is the organisation behind him, focusing on digital technology  both in the company as a whole and on the IT side. They are focused on changing the organisational mentality through technology innovation and promoting their technology focused team to work in an HR way. He thinks the largest opportunity today is technology (smart manufacturing) driving and pushes everyone and being available for use and customer experience improvement with the major benefit being tot take the value out of the data that is produced. This analytical side of the data and predictive maintenance allows us to maintain and develop what we have.

Stig is currently Director Corporate Manufacturing for Autoliv. Stig is responsible for many of the digitalisation projects within Autoliv and has a keen interest in Industry 4.0 and IIoT.

Heiko sits within the Civil Aerospace division of Rolls-Royce, leading a time of 5 as well as influencing and working with the Engineers onsite across Germany. The biggest success in his career is delivering the engineering specification for an upgraded engine to the business and for him the greatest opportunity for manufacturing is combining lean thinking and digitalisation to achieve advanced business models for the company and advanced insights into the product using data.

.

Armin currently sits within the Bosch Thermotechnology division and is responsible for a site and production plant In Germany.  He has 1300 on the site and 400 in the production plant who report directly to him, delivering  to 30 countries.

His biggest career success is in his current role, which has seen a real turn around of the plant. The plant was due to be shut down due to high labour costs and now with reaching operational excellence in production and logistics, they are highly profitable and cost competitive with low cost countries.

He sees the biggest opportunity as combining Lean Production methods with Industry 4.0 to further reduce lead times within the value chain and change to make-to-order for all products.

Damodar is Director of Operational Excellence & Digital Supply Chain with a team of 7 people across 16 sites in Germany. Prior to this new role until July 2018, Damodar looked after 100 people in the Plant at Coca-Cola in Germany. His biggest success is being able to see machines and people come together thanks to the new feeds in information technology and he sees the biggest opportunity for manufacturing as Industry 4.0 helping to unlock the power of people. 

Adrian is the Head of IT Capability for the defence section of the business globally and provides an innovation  service to organisation working with the IT organisation and the engineering business to deliver new capabilities with a team of 5 direct reports and contractors across projects. The proudest moment of his career is the development and progression of the teams of people that have worked for him and he sees the biggest opportunity for manufacturing as the integration of data and technology that can be used to release value from data and make faster decisions.  

 Ilker heads up 120 Industrial Engineering and 156 Pirelli Manufacturing Systems Professionals and a team of 7 in HQ, in 19 factories across 5 regions (Europe, China, Nafta, Russia and Latin America).

His biggest success is Pirelli’s implementation of flexible factory and smart manufacturing programs, creating agility across the plants and beginning to yield financial results. He sees the biggest opportunity in manufacturing as digitalisation to encourage flexibility and tackle emerging complexities in factories. 

Tilmann is currently part of the Business Excellence and Quality Management Function at the Rolling Stock Business Unit of Siemens. This business covers a wide range of rolling stock from High speed to light rail vehicles designed, produced and sold on a global scale. Digitalisation in operations, mainly around Quality and Performance Management is part of his substantial interest and he sees  big  changes and opportunity for Quality Assurance and Business Excellence through the use of smart manufacturing and digitalising operations.

Before he joined the Railway Industry, Tilmann held several positions in the Aerospace and Power Generation industries and accumulated knowledge and leadership experience in different areas such as Project Management, Supply Management and Operations. His biggest career highlight was a green field project he successfully led in Eastern Europe. 

Ralf started his career as a classical process engineer before transition to automation resources during wave 3 of the industrial revolution. Learning by doing in different roles an an additional IT education, Ralf  is now helping applying Industry 4.0 within Nestle.

Ralf has a team of 150 people across Germany, Scandinavia and the Netherlands and he is most proud of the influence Engineering has cross the business and sees remaining competitive as challenge within the manufacturing industry. 

Alexis is currently the head of the factory's technical department at Mars, responsible for 50 people including technicians, engineers and project-managers. He supervises the factories investment portfolio (>10m€/year) from conception to installation and manages the plants maintenance; preventive and curative (~3m€/year). In November 2018 Alexis will be moving to Beiersdorf where he will be looking after SHE and Continuous Improvement.

As Plant Director for Continental, Sibylle oversees over 1000 employees, and has a deep interest in the move towards Industry 4.0 and how lean management principles and transformation can bu built upon for successful digital transformation. Sibylle will be discussing how artificial intelligence, cloud computing, the latest data analytics technologies and smart sensors supported Continental’s transition to smart manufacturing and established them as a frontrunner in the manufacturing field.

.Juha sits in the HQ of Konocranes a Corporate Level with a team of 1000 people globally. The biggest success to date in his career is over the past 14 years at Konocranes he has help multiple positions and helped lead the transformation which has made the business the biggest in their sector. Juha sees the biggest opportunity in manufacturing as data and connectivity, allowing manufacturers to penetrate into customer needs/challenges and improve the possibility of generating an offering that is specifically focused on the individual need of a particular customer. 

Richard is Head of Digital Innovation at Pirelli Germany overseeing 60 digital professionals. Richard’s biggest career success to date is the implantation of the smart manufacturing programme he started in Milan, including the training of 400 people globally to develop their own value add to the smart manufacturing strategy. He sees the biggest opportunity in manufacturing as the organisational development and the need to change to make the most of data and modern technology. Richard is extremely dedicated to the different approach to the way his company is organised in order to drive transparency and flexibility, bringing technology and business together to form an agile way of working.  

Nick has an MSc in Physics & Astronomy at the University of Amsterdam and has recently completed his PhD in Aerospace Engineering (Delft University of Technology). His research has been focused on Process Improvement in Manufacturing of Composite materials. He has experience as an R&D Engineer at the Dutch National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR), Operational Excellence at Deloitte Consulting and he certified as Black Belt in a Leadership program at AkzoNobel Industrial Chemicals. At AkzoNobel he started the digital transformation and led the program "Industrial Chemicals 4.0".Currently, most recently, Nick was Global Manager Operational Technology, Utilities & Water at Heineken where he supported digital transformation in supply chain. In 2016 he founded a startup JUGAAD Analytics, which focusses on Predictive Analytics in the Process and Aerospace Industry. 

Since January this year, Matthew has been the European Manufacturing Director of Coats plc, the world’s largest supplier of Thread. With his team of 7, he is responsible for over 1000 employees in 4 production plants. His biggest success has been the restructuring of Linde’s operations in Southern Europe 2015 to 18. He believes the biggest opportunity in the manufacturing industry is talent – recruitment and development, despite the unstoppable race to automation. People will always define our boundary of success.

Steffen is Manager Advanced Manufacturing at John Deere, leading the European Team of 9 people, serving more than 10 units and design centers. Prior to this role, Steffen´s background was in Operations Manufacturing Engineering, Quality and last assignment leading the assembly operation and maintenance in our Cab factory. He sees the biggest opportunity for the manufacturing industry as using the potential within the digital transformation and benefiting from technologies as additive Manufacturing to shorten lead times and better serve customer needs in terms of individualization.

Building on a more than 10 years of experience with MES across different companies and profound knowledge of Smart Manufacturing, IoT/IIoT and Industry 4.0, Stefan joined Georg Fischer at the business unit GF Casting Solutions. There he took the opportunity to lead the companies Industry 4.0 journey on a global scale. His biggest accomplishment is understanding that not the recording of data but the usage of data is what matters and delivering this work method to his peers. This supports his belief  that Smart Manufacturing is not about the technology which will be used but that the biggest opportunity across manufacturing is to enable the people to make the difference. Your digital culture centered around your people, helps them make better decisions and embrace their creativity, innovation, imagination, intuition, ethics and emotions.

Andreas sits within the R&D division of Trumpf and has a global team of 300 people.

His biggest career success to date is the transformation of the organisation to a truly agile development team.The biggest opportunity in manufacturing is the automation of  machines and an autonomous machine. This is not only about making the process flow better but make manufacturing intelligent and self improving. This involves data and AI and also that in future we can build more intelligently and efficiently without putting strain on our people. This translates to automating the process,  smart products and developing a circular economy.  

Uwe has more than 25 years experience in the manufacturing environment and with industrial software and automation products.  After assignments with heavy machine tool builder Schiess and Wonderware in Europe, the US, and Asia, among others, Uwe opened Incuity Systems, the European subsidiary of Incuity Software.  After the acquisition of Incuity by Rockwell Automation, Uwe was responsible as VP EMEA Sales for Incuity.  In 2008, he was appointed as Director of Software for the EMEA region. Since 2014, Uwe has served MESA International as Chairman of the EMEA Board.

Josef sits within the manufacturing division of the business within a  technology leadership position where his primary responsibility is technology within the manufacturing OEM business across Munich and Poland.

One of the main successes in Josef’s career is when the establishment of an analytics platform for process data was installed across the company, converting the focus from process data to business value.He see’s lots  of opportunities in the manufacturing industry the primary one being the ability to process data and automate cognitive tasks which provides the opportunity to organise manufacturing in a totally different way. 

Stefan is working as Product Manager for Balluff GmbH in Neuhausen a.d.F. and has been responsible for the product portfolio of photoelectric sensors since October 2006. After studying Electrical Engineering at the Cooperative State University Stuttgart, Stefan initially worked as a Project Manager for control technology at a market-leading machine tool manufacturer until his move to Balluff.  In addition, he is involved with current trends and technologies in sensor technology with his main focus on topics such as IoT, digitisation and Industry 4.0.

Dr Hauser started his career as a Research Scientist within the Corporate Research department at Siemens, Germany and then relocated to Singapore where he headed up the Siemens central research unit. He then joined the technical service provider TÜV SÜD in Singapore to build up new innovative businesses As Director he is now leading the Centre of Excellence Digital Service in Singapore, a key un it in TÜV SÜD´s digitalisation strategy and is driving the development of new solutions around safety, cyber security and reliability of smart systems in the strategic segments Autonomous Driving, Industry 4.0 and Smart Healthcare.

Olaf is currently deputy head of the Fraunhofer Institute. His key responsibilities are around the Fraunhofer IOSB’s automation specialisms at three sites. He is a member of the key Industrie 4.0 committees and holds a teaching position at the Karlsruhe Insitute of Technology (KIT).

Kristian Raue is co-founder of Cedalo AG. Cedalo's innovative Streamsheet-Technology allows the non-programmer to quickly build, analyze, visualize and control smart processes in the IIoT and Industry 4.0 space. Previously, Kristian was the founder and CEO of Jedox AG in Freiburg, a leading provider of Business Intelligence software with locations in the USA, Australia and Singapore. From 1991 to 2000, Kristian Raue was the CEO of IntelliCube Software AG, which has meanwhile merged with the INFOR Group. Kristian Raue studied industrial engineering with a focus on mechanical engineering at TU Darmstadt.

Marco brings more than 10 years of IoT experience through senior management positions. Adaptive to the dynamic and fast-paced IoT industry environment, Marco has been successfully implementing KORE’s go-to-market product strategy in Europe, strengthening KORE’s position in the European marketplace. 

Having an MBA in Change Management, Christian firmly believes that people make the difference - if they are positioned within the right spot of the organisation and if they understand how to contribute to a clearly articulated strategy. He has spent his career in Exec / GM positions in several organisations, focusing on innovative solutions and facilitating agile change to improve results.