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…

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 Allison Grealis, President and Founder of Women in Manufacturing as she discusses how to find your community and what programs are offered in the manufacturing industry.

Atlas Copco is a leading international manufacturing corporation with a wide range of products. The products and services they manufacture range from industrial air compressors, generatiors, construction equipment, mining and tunneling equipment, industrial tools, assembly systems, and vacuum technology. Like many other manufacturing companies, Atlas Copco sought new ways of efficiently offering and selling customized solution packages comprising devices, software, services, and accessories. In this session, learn how Atlas Copco has simplified its complex sales processes and implemented an end-to-end digital sales process.

What is “IT”? It’s not simply Information Technology. It is everything. How can you transform one part of the enterprise and not others? Do we stop with the supply chain? What about the customer experience? Transforming “IT” isn’t simply about IT and OT, it is about have the honesty to realize that for this thing to work, IT has to change.

In this webinar, you’ll hear directly from Shelley Peterson, Principal Investigator for AR/VR/MR at Lockheed Martin, about their journey in exploring various tools and technologies to aid in their technicians, how they’re using Microsoft mixed reality solutions today, and the ROI they’ve achieved, and their plans to implement and leverage the Microsoft technology for future projects and programs.

The presentation will be focused on the impacts of the COVID crisis and sociopolitical issues. I will show how the COVID crisis changed the marketplace using beer as an example, but also speak about how to motivate essential factory workers at a time when most others were working from home and how to operate in a post-COVID world. How focusing on Safety and Health as your first priority guarantees business continuity, service, quality and cost.

Beyond the PLC: A more advanced approach to industrial control and IIoT

Providing information / experiences to fellow Tier 1 suppliers that can help them navigate the design and development process for “Build to Print” suppliers for the automotive industry. Giving participants some key steps to follow when working with a OEM on a new development in hopes that they can improve their process and have successful launches of their product.

Please join us for an Executive Interview with Donzel Leggett, the Vice President of Global Manufacturing Excellence at General Mills as he discusses global manufacturing excellence and world class performance.

This presentation will share lessons learned and experiences from implementing an innovation mindset for an R&D organization. We are all busy but innovation is a lifeblood for the business. It generates novel ideas for products or services that make an significant impact. It is fundamental that your team is encouraged to participate and that a culture of exploring new concepts and technologies is established. Even within large corporations employees can demonstrate an intrapreneurship spirit. In order to be effective and efficient, establishing a systematic approach is key. Start small, fail fast and push constant experimentation. Make the process simple to follow, support a sense of community and above all make it fun and rewarding.

From Research and Development to Manufacturing, in today’s business world all functions are required to innovate. During my career I have evaluated various innovation computer programs and online services. In this presentation, we review various digital tools to assist your company innovation process.

Innovation is all about creating measurable, quantifiable, and demonstrable value to both your customer and business. It is your ability to build the right product, for the right market, build it right with the right tools, processes and resources, and build it fast so you do not miss the market window. This presentation will teach 20 lessons in 20 years of practice and introduce the innovation ecosystem and provide valuable lessons from practice to help you establish an effective culture of innovation to reward the right behavior with a maniacal focus on the customer.

As the manufacturing world quickens the pace of needing to gather information for process performance it’s imperative that leaders invest wisely in launching these endeavors. A well thought out plan for an MES/Industry 4.0 implementation is key to having a successful campaign that is efficient and on budget. Poor planning and the lack of milestones will lead to delays, cost overruns and quite possibly complete failure.

By definition compliance means conforming to a rule, such as a specification, policy, standard of law. Regulatory compliance goes further stating that it is the goal that organizations will strive to meet the requirements by being aware of all requirements and make sure that the compliances are met in time and in proper order.

Agility is necessary to be successful in R&D product development. We can learn this from taking a look at case studies of successful companies over time and how they’ve remained relevant as society changes. Agility, however, is usually associated with a small size, so how does a large company remain agile? Dow Inc. has successfully delivered new innovations in short times as demonstrated by its response to the pandemic with the development of PPE for the medical industry. In addition to examining the critical elements which made that possible, I will discuss my experience on leading the team through changing times and discuss 7 key components I found critical for agile product development.

In this presentation, Dr. Marlene R. Kolodziej, DBA, ITIL, VP, Centralized Services, Ricoh USA, Inc. will discuss how Augmented Reality (AR) is one silver lining that has come from the pandemic and is allowing for a superior customer experience, despite the limitations of not being able to complete in-person service calls. She’ll also detail how people, technology, knowledge and process play into the delivery of a business continuity plan and use Ricoh’s response to the pandemic as an example of what worked, while also sharing lessons learned.

The world is on the cusp of the Forth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0. It is quite different than the prior three Industrial Revolutions – steam & water power, assembly lines, and computerization, as it will challenge the enterprises on not only their business operations but also on how efficiently they adapt to the evolving human behaviors. This revolution is expected to impact all industries, disciplines, economies and ultimately societies. In this new era of revolution, only those enterprises or people will survive and thrive who will adapt to Industry 4.0 by correctly adopting the Digital Transformation strategies and the technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, IOT, Cloud, Digital Twin, Augmented Reality, etc.

Manufacturers are finding amazing value leveraging technology to accelerate innovation cycles and deliver new products and services. Some such examples have reduced innovation cycle times by as much as 35% and decreased cost of NPI similarly. Imagine company revenue being reduced by as much as 40% due to the impact of the pandemic only to emerge rapidly with new product lines that fill the revenue gap at an even greater profitability prior to the pandemic. Lets discuss how this is being done.

Methodology like ‘3×5 why’s’ and ‘Prevent Protect Predict’ have been long established, but organizations still struggle today to get to the bottom of systemic root causes that slow down their programs, cost them money and ultimately can break the trust relationship with their consumers and their brand image.

In 2030 Gen Z employees will be over a third of the workforce. These early career employees need to be engaged differently from the generations before. Hear the perspective of a leader of teams that has hired over a hundred Gen Z engineers. Walk away from this presentation with practical guidance to improve the effectiveness of your engagement of Gen Z employees!

Please join the Vice President of Diversity & Belonging from Live Nation Entertainment, Elizabeth Morrison in this Executive Interview where she will discuss the importance of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.

As the Baby Boomer generation retires from the workforce, numerous industries are finding in difficult to fill positions. This has lead to more companies looking toward automating as many lower skilled tasks as possible to free employees to focus on other tasks. In this presentation, Aaron Prather will discuss some of the best practices to follow when deploying robotics and other automation into your operation and how to make your existing employees not only part of the process, but team players in wanting the robots as part of their team.

Packaging Hall of Famer Dr. Michael Okoroafor sits down to chat about the current state of the manufacturing industry and what we need to consider moving forward. Prior to COVID, the trend in the manufacturing industry was how big could you get with your manufacturing infrastructure. Now as we learn to adapt, it’s important to have a nimble and flexible agile manufacturing structure and a digital platform to align processes.

Winning the war on talent with a great place to work culture.