Is your culture what you want it to be or what you have allowed it to become? If you’re not talking about it and working on it every day, chances are it’s the latter. At the foundation of any successful company is a strong culture, driven by the spirit of continuous improvement, and powered by passionate leaders. If you’re lacking any of those elements, you’re missing an opportunity to create lasting growth with your most important asset – your people. In this presentation, Brett Wood, the President & CEO of Toyota Material Handling North America, will provide leadership principles and practices that you can implement to create a culture of continuous improvement, and he will give tangible examples of Toyota’s Kaizen culture in action.

World Economic Forum 2021 proposes a “Great Reset” across all business boundaries & dimensions. Softtek Low Touch Consulting “LTC” offers an innovation model for the new state of our economy, permanently altered by Covid-19. This disruption is creating new winners and is characterized by a frictionless flow of value models at the center of transformation. Through Softtek’s value-based client partnership model, our “LTC” offers new models of frictionless manufacturing operations. Examples include: paperless integrated systems; best-in-class linking ERP, MES, SCM and intelligent data acquisition; cognitive enterprise-wide use of predictive models; transforming plant safety operations with kiosks, touchless platforms.

Join us for an Executive Interview with Barbara Philibert, President and CEO, Industrial Technologies Group & US Wire Group at HEICO as she discusses how to drive cultural transformation.

Join Brent Ruth from Caterpillar for presentation on Process Automation and Digital Transformation! Process Automation is a little understood tool for Digital Transformation. Often companies start their automation journey in IT and Finance and struggle to break out of these silos. I want to talk to you about this tool as a key component and accelerator of your Digital Transformation through actual case studies and implementation strategies tied to real ROI. The future is coming, will you be part of it?

Leadership development programs can try their best to teach leaders how to coach, but I’ve learned that you must first accept a different way of thinking. The act of coaching (verb) vs. BECOMING A COACH (noun). To embody the spirit of a coach, one must shift their focus from inward (yourself) to outward (developing others). In other words, you must put the employee’s interests in front of your own. It’s a mental shift to be other’s focused, not self-focused. To be a problem facilitator, not a problem solver. To be an active listener, not an active talker.

In this session, you’ll learn how to BECOME A COACH. Enter if you dare!

Emerging technologies are rapidly changing the automation landscape and the enterprise digital operating model. Firms that fail to see the big picture and address automation through a complementary set of technologies, will eventually fail to achieve their goals of digital transformation. Hyperautomation is redefining how firms should define, architect, and deliver automation programs at an enterprise scale and deliver measurable financial outcomes.

The presentation will layout the compelling value proposition Additive Manufacturing provides for the aerospace industry. In it, I will cover the speed, cost, performance and sustainability advantages the technology provides and review real case studies Eaton Aerospace has identified. I will also give the audience a sense of how these opportunities are identified within their organizations. Finally I’ll touch on the process required to build the internal capability and market credibility required to be successful.

Karen’s company’s journey to their new mantra –Grit Matters: Perseverance, Heart & Integrity, is the reboot of their vision, mission, and values. Her role, as she puts it, is that of the gardener as as she leads the successful day-to-day operations of American Crane, a 180-person manufacturing facility headquartered in Douglassville, PA. American Crane is recognized as a leader in the design and manufacturing of cranes, hoists, and other material handling equipment.

Learn more about Karen, American Crane & Equipment Corporation, and exactly how the culture she built helped the business even during tumultuous times.

An engaging overview of how to improve the speed of getting new products to market from a packaging perspective. A review of how new products and packaging should be designed for ease of manufacturing, sustainability, functionality and distribution especially addressing the growth of e-commerce. Collaboration and design to meet both product and marketing goals as well as ensuring design addresses manufacturing and fulfilment as well as consumer and user requirements.

Join us for an Executive Interview with Mark Whitten, President & CEO at Spartanburg Steel Products as he discusses how leadership transformation is evolving businesses.

This presentation outlines 10 capability gaps that are needed for virtual and augmented reality solutions to reach their potential within aerospace manufacturing environments. These needs range from contamination risk mitigation to overcoming limitations and security concerns. The goal of this presentation is to find partners willing to help define the scope of the problems presented and aid in prioritizing solutions.

In this talk we’ll explore the Quality and Customer Service connection. Quality acts as the frontline for the development team partnering with Customer Service as the frontline to customers. The partnership of these two organizational functions is critical both with each other and the engineering teams because of the long term effects on the customer experience. This discussion will explore the outbound relationships of the development, quality, and customer service team interactions. Then we’ll put a lens on the feedback loop, or the inbound calls to customer service, the escalation paths necessary to resolve issues, and the connection back to quality. These are some of the critical infrastructure necessary to help create a great and long-lasting customer experience.

Disruption of the pandemic has been creating even more opportunities in remote patient monitoring. There are many ways that this disruption creates a ripe time for invention and creativity. I will discuss the science of skin and its influence longer-term wear of remote monitoring wearable medical devices. The benefits to the patients and the care providers to enjoy better compliance are big drivers that are changing the way healthcare will take place in the future.

Many experienced leaders know the importance of designing an interactive customer experience program, but often fail to connect the experience across the entire value-chain. This session will showcase the power of creating an exceptional experience for customers, suppliers and cost savings it can bring your organization.

This talk is about a subject which I am passionate about. Developing talent. This is one of the most important things leaders do and my definition of leadership is helping those around you reach their potential. I will cover three main areas of talent development. First I’ll review some of the development tools we leverage to identify and develop critical talent. Then I’ll share some of our global training tools and finally I’ll conclude with sharing some of the ways we try to provide opportunities to both broaden and deepen our talent.

AB-InBev, the world’s largest beer brewer has been transforming their entire supply chain. Innovating through discovery, development, and scaling of technology has enabled AB-InBev Brewmasters to deliver fresh beer to markets across the globe keeping sustainability as a top priority
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Please Join the VP & CIO of YMCA, Siva Balu in this Executive Interview where he will discuss how Digital Transformation looks for non-profit organizations and how Artificial Intelligence plays a role.

Three years ago, the WE RISE initiative was conceived and launched to develop strategies and support systems to improve gender diversity at Director level and higher in the Coca Cola NA Supply Chain Organization. At the start of the journey, 35% of Managers in SC at entry and mid-levels of the org were women, but at Director and higher levels, that number dropped to 18%. The WE RISE journey placed a high level of focus on both attracting and promoting Women in Supply Chain. Three years later, the numbers are much different. I will share more details of this journey, and its results.

When designing business processes for supply chain, we often start by planning to implement best practices. What can be easily overlooked is the actual needs of the business, both now and in the future. Sometimes a less mature or simplified version of a best practice may be the right solution to achieve business excellence, with a roadmap for process maturity as the business changes. In this presentation I will discuss aligning best practices with business needs for Planning and Inventory based processes.

One of the biggest aspects of the day to day operations of any organization is communication. Sadly, it’s also one of the most overlooked! Internal communication drives business success. It can make or break a project and usually shows up on performance reviews, yet never makes it into the training manual. We need to change our approach to create a culture of positive interactions, increased productivity, happier employees, and less waste overall. The best part is, it doesn’t cost you anything to take full advantage of it! Today, we’re going to review three things you can do right now to ensure your team is creating the results you need through their communications.

As a 21st-century concept, the Digital Twin captures the idea that we are moving work from the physical world into the virtual one. It moves toward using bits, which are getting cheaper all the time, in place of atoms, which are getting more expensive. We are replacing expensive physical time, energy, and material with much cheaper digital information.

The Digital Twin is the concept driver behind Manufacturing 4.0. It moves us from a functional- centric approach to a product-centric one. It integrates manufacturing as a critical aspect of product creation, so that how to manufacture products is not an after-thought once a product is designed and engineered. It will improve both productivity and quality.

Building a team, following the innovation model, and improving key systems to increase our workforce capability and deliver business results.

Please join the Senior Manager of Continuous Improvement for Home Market Foods as he discusses building teams with a purpose to achieve business excellence and why leadership is important for Continuous Improvement.

Please Join the CIO of Wrench Group, Robert Sheesley in this Executive Interview where he will discuss how to lead a Digital Transformation and how to navigate through the challenges and surprises along the way.

Please Join us for an Executive Interview with Randy Cooper, the Director of Transportation at Del Monte Foods. In this interview, Randy will discuss how your company can leverage technology to reduce cost, as well as how small to mid-size companies may tackle transportation cost reduction. Randy will also include what kind of partners help in managing cost and how to better manage third parties. You won’t want to miss this!

Innovation is an increasingly important contributor to the success of an organization, enhancing its ability to adapt in a changing world. Novel and innovative ideas give rise to better ways of working, as well as new solutions for generating revenue and improving sustainability. It is closely linked to the resilience of an organization, in that it helps them to understand and respond to challenging contexts, seize the opportunities that might bring, and leverage the creativity of both its own people and those it deals with. ISO 56000 series covers all aspects of innovation management, from how to generate those first sparks of an idea, right through to selling something new in the marketplace.

Please Join the SVP & CTO of Extra Space Storage, Bron McCall in this Executive Interview where he will discuss the digital transformation journey within his organization. He will also advise how to get started and some lessons learned along the way.

Calculating savings for an automation project is not as simple as payback, things to consider include, direct and indirect labor, maintenance, capex, opex, materials, inflation; with this presentation you should be able to decide how to calculate the ROI of the project and get the budget to make it happen.

User experience aims to apply intuitive and efficient approaches for users to engage with any digital product in an effective manner, ultimately with the intent to achieve specific product goals. Clearly defining foundational measurements and packaging recommendations while syndicating with stakeholders allows strategy leaders to pivot as needed and finesse while continually maintaining a holistic understanding of current product status. Communicating product direction not just as a feature set, but in making features more streamlined only enhances user performance.

Culture is the character and personality of your organization. It’s what makes your business unique and is the sum of its values, traditions, beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes. You do not build positive culture by providing free snacks to your employees, or by having gym facilities in your workplace! To start, you begin to build positive workplace culture by clearly communicating the companies vision and talking and understanding the needs of your employees.

Overcoming a challenging culture can seem an arduous task, but with the correct approach, you can achieve world-class results. As a leader, you must understand the critical link between employee behavior, environment and the resulting workplace culture.

LEGO (Business Services) is building a Culture of Operational Excellence in a very LEGO way including storytelling to build understanding and connection – Swamp to Summit, change management does exist and why it is difficult and the BSO Journey so-far and what comes next…

Please Join the CIO & CSO of Hagerty, Kelly Smith in this Executive Interview where he will discuss the role company culture plays in digital transformation. He will also explain the positive impact digital transformation had on customer engagement, employee innovation, productivity and more.

Karen Norheim, President & CEO, American Crane & Equipment, will share her leadership philosophies and how to develop a highly productive workforce. Karen will discuss challenges faced and tips to create a successful work/life balance.