Experienced versatile Leader currently leading the Berry EMEIA Operations and Business Excellence team with a total of 18 manufacturing facilities. Very strong Finance Background and broad skill set in Strategic Management and Continuous Improvement. After many years in Finance he worked in various functions as Commercial Leader in Procurement and Sales as well as in Project Management for Restructuring. Recently discovered the importance of Employee Engagement as the key to success in Leadership.

I’m a passionate Enterprise software executive with extensive experience in planning, managing and executing accelerated growth across multiple market segments, channels and geos. General management, P&L ownership, strategic Planning, Business Planning and matrix responsibility across sales, marketing, and professional services are key assets of my profile. I’m actively looking for a new exciting international project where to invest my time and passion to contribute with my experience and leadership in driving consistent and profitable growth.

Andrea has been selling advanced technology solutions to Enterprise customers for 20 years. He’s done business and led sales teams for expanding business into new geographical markets and build profitable, long-term relationships with Partners and Customers.

Engineer with a long trajectory in the Industry in Operation areas, with a strong capacity in Process Optimization. During the last 5 years more concentrated in the implementation and roll out of Projects in the framework of Industry 4.0 in the areas of Quality, Production, Maintenance and Lean Manufacturing. Manager of the Awarded Project in the First Edition of the Data Science Awards organized by Telefonica for the Best Big Data initiative in Spain.

Carsten Bitschkus is the Senior MES Consultant and Key Account Manager at Lighthouse Systems. A Manufacturing Quality & Process Professional by trade, Carsten has gained experience having been a user of an MES solution at a 2nd tier automotive supplier and also at consulting companies assistant building requirements and implementing solutions. Carsten is a six-sigma green belt and has worked closely with global organisations, specialising in the promotion and implementation of Quality Systems and Manufacturing Execution Systems, across all manufacturing verticals. From his experience, Carsten fully appreciates ‘what it takes’ to make a success and deliver value for money to customers. Carsten is a great believer in the value behind developing new ideas for improving processes to achieve world-class manufacturing status, without having to sacrifice people and company’s principles. Having joined Lighthouse Systems in 2018, he advises and assists manufacturers’ with their Industry 4.0 ambitions with digital transformation across all manufacturing verticals, using Lighthouse System’s world-class MES software; Shopfloor-Online.

Christian GEORGES, born in 1961 in France, he graduated in 1984 from the “Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris” and from University Pierre et Marie Curie with a DEA in Organic Chemistry. After a first experience with Glaxo Group Research in Medicinal Chemistry , he joined L’Oréal in 1987. Starting as Engineer in Chimex, an entity that develops and produces patented molecules for L’Oréal, he ended up as CEO after several positions including Plant Management. Joining the cosmetic branch of L’Oréal in 2003, he managed the plant of Sicos, Luxury Division and created in 2009 as Technical Director, the “ Pole d’ Excellence” with the plants of Fapagau , BRI and Sicos. More recently Manufacturing Excellence Corporate Director, he manages the Operational Excellence System and 4.0 transformation for Manufacturing at a corporate level.

Christian is a highly experienced Lean Manufacturing Professional who has spent the greater part of his career in the Automotive Industry. Currently he is working in the consumer goods industry, being accountable for implementing Lean as well as Industry 4.0 roadmap across the company. Prior to joining STAEDTLER, Christian held several leadership roles in Production Control & Logistics as well as Lean Manufacturing for ITW, TRW, Faurecia and Federal Mogul in Europe, Asia and the US. During his last assignments he was responsible for Lean Transformation on global scale. Christian earned a diploma in Supply Chain Engineering from the University of Applied Science, Erfurt, in 2002 and an MBA in General Management from the University of Wales in 2012.

Christoph Raum is working as a Digitalization Project Manager for the Business Unit Factory Automation at Siemens AG in Amberg, Germany. He has over 8 years international experience in manufacturing and digital transformation, including automation & process engineering, quality management, operations management, project management and lean methodologies. He holds an engineering degree in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology and started his professional career in 2011 at Siemens as a production engineer for PCB and Box Build Assembly in the electronics manufacturing industry. In 2016 he moved to Siemens China and contributed to ramp up a costumer focused digitalization team, specialized in the end to end digital transformation for discrete manufacturing industries. Since 2018 he has been working for the International Operations & Consulting team in the Business Unit Factory Automation focusing on division wide digitalization programs, global manufacturing footprint and digitalization consultancy services.

Dean Lenane is currently the Geschäftsführer of Fisher Dynamics in Europe. He is also responsible for Sales & Marketing, Program Managment, and Costing worldwide. Before beginning his career with Fisher Dynamics, he was the group Chief Commercial Officer for the Hammerstein group. This followed an eight year assignment as CEO of CRH of North America. During which time, CRH was the fastest growing automotive supplier in North America, growing from $20 million in annual revenue to $350 million in annual revenue over a seven year period. Prior to his work for CRH, Lenane held several positions at Johnson Controls and at United Technologies as a program manager and as a statistical analyst. Lenane holds bachelor’s degrees from the University of Detroit, a master’s degree from Boston University, and a law degree from Michigan State University.

Dirk Vander Mierde has graduated as biochemical engineer from the University of Leuven, Belgium in 2002 and obtained a PhD in medical science at the same university in 2008. In 2015 he also graduated as Master of Business Administration (MBA) of the University of Louisville, Kentucky. He began his career at ABInbev as a process engineer where he was responsible for the brewing process. In 2011, he started at Datwyler and took the lead in different production departments. As from end of 2015, he became site director at Datwyler Alken, Belgium where he has full P&L responsibility for the Belgian facility.

Leader of the Severstal Agile transformation Managing an Agile centre of expertise Trainer and coach of executive boards Assistant in organizational design For more than 10 years has been engaged in project activities to improve operational efficiency and to introduce Lean production in mechanical engineering industry Ph.D. in Technology at Saratov State Technical University

I like considering myself a Millennial with almost 20 years of experience. Italian, “friulano”, engineer. I spend a huge portion of my career in operations, starting from operator in assembly to factory director in Electrolux Porcia. In Electrolux Porcia factory we introduced in 2015 an innovative platform of resource management. This experience was fundamental to make the good knowledge owned by few excellent managers available to the whole organisation. In the last 2 years I’ve been leading digital transformation in Operations Europe for Electrolux. Together with my digital team we are connecting the 15 factories in Europe towards new digital experiences. We are either piloting and adopting new technologies and enabling people in becoming more familiar with them.

Fabian Schumann is a Managing Consultant with Gallup. He supports global clients to drive behavioural change across their organizations and leverages Gallup’s cutting-edge insights in the science of behavioural economics and decision-making to support leaders and consult them on structural and behavioural interventions to better engage employees, customers and suppliers. Prior to joining Gallup, Fabian spent six years in the Berlin start-up scene in the fields of online education and open innovation. He was part of the founding team of Europe’s first open education platform iversity and in his function as Head of Academic Partnerships built partnerships with and advised international research organizations and knowledge-based organizations in the digital transformation of their curriculum. In his role he also developed iversity's “Digital Transformation” curriculum, which focused on how new technologies change the business environment and how organizations and leaders can adapt to this rapid pace of change. Afterwards he joined Europe’s leading open innovation platform jovoto to lead the ForeWork Initiative, a crowdsourcing project to explore the future of work, hosted by jovoto and in collaboration with adidas Group, Cisco Systemcs, Deutsche Bank AG, Deutsche Telekom AG, Volkswagen AG, and Vitra AG. Fabian has a MA in Political Economy of European Integration from the Berlin School of Economics and Law, as well as a BSc in Economics from Goethe University Frankfurt.

Holger Feldhege studied Business Administration and holds a PhD in Production Management. He has extensive experience in the sales and service business as well as production, engineering, and logistics. He worked in various management positions at Mannesmann and ThyssenKrupp Elevator, spending more than seven years in Asia. Upon his return to Germany in 2010, Holger Feldhege took on the position of CEO Manufacturing for the business unit Central, Eastern, and Northern Europe and later Senior Vice-President Manufacturing Elevator for the worldwide group. In 2014, Holger Feldhege joined Bühler as Head of Manufacturing & Logistics. In 2017, he was named Chief Operations Officer responsible for Manufacturing, Logistics, and Supply Chain. Holger Feldhege was born in 1968 and is German.

Ian Williams is the Senior Director of Solution Architecture for GE Digital in Europe. Ian and his team work closely with our customers to provide advice and guidance on their digital transformation journey, architecting key solutions utilising the full GE Digital software portfolio that includes Automation, Manufacturing, APM and IIOT to bring demonstrable value in achieving their outcomes. Ian brings over 22 years’ experience in industrial software solutions across a variedrange of positions including solution consulting, project delivery, design authority and systems engineering supportinga wide variety of industries. Prior to joining GE, Ian held senior positions with Schneider Electric and Thalesandwas technicallead on many large-scale projects and pursuits. Ian holds a MSc in Computing for Commerce and Industry and is a Chartered Electrical Engineer and Member of the IET.

I have been working for Datwyler for over 8 years, starting as Continuous Improvement Manager. Held different functions within operations. Recently appointed as VP Global Operations Services. As VP Global Operations Services, I am responsible to support the business with professional centralised services, which consist of Investment Mgt, Technology Mgt, Global supply chain, Global process engineering and our own Datwyler Production System. - Master of science in chemical engineering - Lean Six Sigma Black belt - In 2018, I graduated as a Master of Business Administration (MBA) of the University of Louisville, Kentucky

John Harhen works with industry clients in many sectors in operations and supply chain improvement. This includes pharmaceuticals, medical device, drink, food and distribution. His primary areas of concentration are rapid analytics, end to end supply chain and operations optimization, cost to serve, and operational and commercial due diligence. He has many years of experience of working with Private Equity funds doing buy-side due diligence particularly in the life sciences area. His strengths in analytics allow him play on the commercial side as well as the operations side of due diligence. Prior to becoming a consultant, John worked at director level with Wyeth Pharmaceuticals (now Pfizer), SmithKline Beecham (now GSK), and Digital Equipment Corporation. John Harhen graduated in Industrial Engineering from the UC Galway of the National University of Ireland. John earned a master of engineering science degree in Computer Integrated Manufacturing also from UC Galway, and completed a Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst in Industrial Engineering/Operations Research. His dissertation focussed on applications of Artificial Intelligence to Corporate Strategy. John has many papers published and has co-authored a book on Production Management.

Jordan Workman serves as Global Director of Client Development for Performance Solutions by Milliken. He leads a team focused on partnerships and strategy within the manufacturing and supply chain functions of multi-national clients. Clients served span a variety of industries, including agri-business, pulp & paper, packaging, medical, pharma, chemical, food and beverage, mining and specialty plastics. Prior to joining Performance Solutions by Milliken, Jordan was employed by Owens Corning for almost a decade, where he last served as Marketing Director for a global business unit and was responsible for creating and executing the go-to-market strategy that aligned commercial, supply chain, and operational capabilities. He also served as Business Development Leader for greater China based in Shanghai. He brings a wealth of knowledge on how to bridge cross-cultural differences and drive performance in the journey to business excellence. Jordan holds a degree in Economics & Political Science from West Virginia University.

Josef Kriegmair works as Representative Production Turbine Blade / Structure Castings at MTU Aero Engines AG in Centre Production. His focus is on developing and implementing digital process chains, CAM/CAM methods, NC simulation solutions, manufacturing intelligence for turbine blades and structure castings. Prior to this, he was in technical procurement, logistics & plant maintenance, production engineering focus technology development for production and maintenance, repair & overhaul at MTU Aero Engines. He holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering focus Production Technology and a degree in Industrial Engineering focus Project Management and Technology Management.

As the Head of Product at Resco, Juraj Mojik is responsible for delivering features that add value for customers. Working with the company well over 15 years, he has supported the digital transformation of many organizations and understands their needs. With the new Resco Inspections product, he is leading the innovation initiatives to ensure that new technologies can be applied to businesses as soon as possible.

Kari Terho is General Manager, Elisa Smart Factory at New Business Development in Elisa Corporation, the leading ITC service provider in Finland. Kari joined Elisa as Vice President and Head of Fixed and mobile Network Services in 2008 for Corporate Customers. Prior to joining to Elisa, Kari held various director positions in the Sales and Business Development in TeliaSonera, the most recent being Director of Business Development for TeliaSonera IES SME Marketing and Offering. Earlier he has worked as Business Development Director at Yomi Sortware Ltd. and held the EMEA E-Services Business Development Manager position at Hewlett-Packard GmBH as well as the E-Commerce Marketing Manager position at Hewlett-Packard, Finland. He also has several years of experience working for different IT companies. Kari lives in Espoo, Finland, with his wife and two children.

Luke has spent over 16 years within the manufacturing sector, holding key leadership positions across many manufacturing organisations, responsible for delivering change management programmes, across multiple business sectors and industries, including pharma, aerospace and FMCG, along with having military leadership experience during his time in the Royal Air Force, as a tornado fleet specialist. In his time, he has held roles as a technical director, Manufacturing manager, Project leader and transformation specialist, covering multi-million pound budget projects including, factory expansions, new product introductions, and industry4.0 technology introduction. Luke is now the CEO and Founder of Volta, a group of change management experts, leading innovation through a new approach to change by prioritising people as the leaders of change and innovation. Volta is built on the foundation that when employees feel more empowered, this ultimately leads to a better ability to deliver change within the organisation, by creating happier, inspired and more efficient teams within market leading manufacturing organisations. Volta was built with a passion for shaping the future of the manufacturing industry, this ethos comes from a desire to build a self-sustain continuous improvement culture with every partner Luke works with.

Martin has worked in MES/MOM for the last 25 years, deploying solutions in both the process and discrete industries. For the last 10 years he has been working in the aerospace and defense industry solving complex manufacturing challenges. Whilst performing his day job Martin gained an Open University hons degree, and now is an active board member of MESA and the Institute of Technology and Engineering (IET). Today, Martin’s has a privileged position where he is working with blue chip companies helping them prepare for the 4th industrial revolution. Martin heads up ATS Global’s Innovation group called SODA Labs, helping our customers in achieving their innovation goals.

Matthias Graefe is the Transformation Executive responsible to lead IBM’s global supply chain into the cognitive Era. His goal and passion is to augment IBM's supply chain professionals through data and technologies such as Analytics, AI, IoT and Blockchain. Matthias runs a global team of supply chain subject matter experts, agile scrum masters, data scientists and AI developers. Prior to his transformation role Matthias gained execution experience in multiple supply chain operational leadership roles in Asia Pacific and Eastern Europe rotating through supply chain domains including engineering, manufacturing, procurement, supply demand planning as well as customer fulfillment. Matthias has more than 22 years experience in supply chain management, he is a certified Consulting Supply Chain Management Professional (CSCMP) and a recognized speaker at Supply Chain Summits. Matthias obtained a Master in Mechanical Engineering and Business Administration at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany.

Dr. Michael Gawronski studied Physics at the RWTH Aachen, Forschungszentrum Jülich and Kyoto University (Japan). He started his business career in Japan in the Instrumentation Industry where he developed a keen interest in LEAN and Operational Excellence. In 2013 after 16 years of experience in various leadership positions in General Management, Business Development and Manufacturing he joined LEONI as Vice President of the Business Unit Fiber Optics. Since 2018 he is responsible as Vice President for the LEONI Business Segment Enterprise & Industrial Projects comprising of the four Business Units Fiber Optics, Data Communications, Telecommunication Systems and Industrial Projects. His goal is to develop the organisation in the aspects of strategy, stable lean processes and manufacturing footprint.

Morten is Senior Partner, heading the life science sector in Valcon and Key Account Manager for Ferring Pharmaceuticals. Totally he has 20 years of managerial experience from the pharmaceutical sector. When Morten was working in the industry it was first as a line manager, managing maintenance- and production-related projects in both Novo Nordisk and H. Lundbeck in aseptic production, tabletting and pharmaceutical packaging. Later Morten was Managing Director at a pharmaceutical sub supplier, delivering packaging, liquid filling, powder filling, dispensing of raw materials, APIs and excipients and chemical analyses. Morten has been working on the other side of the table as a consultant at Valcon for the last eight years’ where he has been focusing on maintenance, production, OPEX and supply chain management.

Bridging Start-ups innovation and Operations. As the COO of FoldiMate, a start-up which invented the only viable robotic solution to manual clothes folding, Ori focuses on leading the New Product Introduction by creating synergy between Robotics and Appliance manufacturing capabilities. Ori’s experience in both start-ups and larger hi-tech companies enables him to bridge the gap of methodologies and philosophy, and to create new opportunities for both sides. Before joining FoldiMate, Ori worked at Stratasys, a leading manufacturer of 3D printers, prior to this, Ori lead the Operations of Pythagoras-Solar, which developed transparent photovoltaic glass unit, and of ImageID, the inventor of Visidot SCT application, which offers automatic identification and decoding of multiple assets and enhances logistics and manufacturing process reliability.

Paolo Butti is the director for the Industry and the OEM business for Rockwell Automation throughout the Europe, the Middle East and Africa region. Paolo is dedicated to delivering our company’s strategy to bring the Connected Enterprise to life. He accelerates our industry strategy by focusing on understanding customer needs and their best opportunities for productivity, combining our technology and domain expertise to deliver positive business outcomes. His role offers him a unique opportunity to support customers in their digital transformation journey by helping connect the strategy and needs of end users with the expertise of OEMs. Paolo joined Rockwell Automation seven and a half years ago as a global account manager, bringing 17 years of experience in the Tire and Automotive Industry working with both end users and machine builders. Holding an electronic engineering Ph.D. from the Milano School of Engineering “Politecnico,” Paolo has held several leadership positions, including roles in engineering, manufacturing, supplier quality and supply chain, program management and sales management. Paolo has worked around the world, including China, India, the United States, Mexico, and Brazil as well as well throughout eastern Europe. He is currently based in Turin, Italy.

In Whirlpool EMEA since 1989, after a first experience in industrial automation as System and Network Manager and as Project Leader, he dedicated himself to topics of innovation and Product-Process Design support, defining and using processes based on methodologies such as TRIZ, Design for Manufacturing and Assembly, Complexity Management, and contributing to the definition of the global process of New Product Introduction. Afterward he moved his interests to Industrial Research coordinating for Whirlpool EMEA the participation to more than 15 European Funded Projects under FP7 and Horizon 2020 program on various topics such as Internet of Things, Technology Forecasting, Big Data, Edge Computing, Process Engineering, Cyber Physical System, Digital Platforms, Electro Magnetic Welding, Predictive Maintenance, Collaborative Robotics, and Zero Defect Manufacturing. From 2016 onward he contributed to the strategic preparation of Whirlpool Manufacturing 2020 program, based on Industry 4.0 principles as member of the Global Steering Technical Committee and from 2019 he is in charge of I.40 Program Management for EMEA. Currently he is actively involved in seven H2020 Projects (FAR-EDGE, NIMBLE, SERENA, UPTIME, BOOST4.0, ROSSINI, and QU4LITY) and in the European KIC EIT Manufacturing. He’s member of Advisory Board of Osservatorio Industria 4.0 of Politecnico Di Milano, member of Scientific Committee of MADE Competence Center, member of the working group “Research and Development” of American Chamber of Commerce in Italy, member of the Technical-Scientific Thematic Group on High Efficient Production systems of Italian Cluster “Fabbrica Intelligente” He’s author and co-author of 4 patents, 14 scientific paper and delivered speeches in more than 30 national and international conferences.

As Global CTO for Industrie 4.0, Plamen’s role is shaping IBM’sworldwide technical strategy around Industrie 4.0with focus ondeliveringhigher value to manufacturing clients on their transformation journey towards digitization by applying Hybrid Cloud,Analytics and AI from IBM, Open Source and 3rdparty technology.He has been leading a communityof architects and specialists from all unitswith the mission to transfer IBM's experience and technology from the "IT Floor" to the Shop Floor. Fromhundredsofclient engagements and projectsin DACH, he and his team createdthe IBM’s Industrie 4.0 Reference Architecture and Point of View that represent the worldwide blueprintand approachin Industrie 4.0 projects.An important part of his work is his personal engagement in public-private initiatives with high reputation in this area, like SmartFactoryKL and SmartData Innovation Lab, with Plamen as IBM representative in the Steering Boards. In his role as IBM Distinguished Engineer and senior technical executive, he is a sought-after speaker at industry conferences, published over a dozen articles, representing „by-products“ from his client engagements.

Dr. Raffaello Lepratti is Vice President of MOM (Manufacturing Operations Management) Business Development and Marketing for Siemens Digital Industries Software, a leading global provider of software solutions to drive the digital transformation of industry. Dr. Lepratti has almost a decade of experience in Automotive and has held positions in European and Asian divisions within Siemens. His roles have spanned Product Management, Marketing, and Account Management. He joined Siemens in 2010. Dr. Lepratti holds a degree in electrical engineering, as well as a PhD in Advanced Human-Machine Collaboration. Over the years, he has worked on several international research projects, is the author of books and scientific papers, and is co-owner of several patents. He is a member of MESA’s international board of directors.

Dr.-Ing. Sebastian Gottschalk studied Mechanical Engineering at the RWTH Aachen in Germany and INSA de Lyon in France. He did his PhD studies on Production Engineering and obtained an Executive MBA title of the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland). After working as leader of the business unit Production Management in industry consultancy and research at the RWTH Aachen he joined Beiersdorf AG in 2009. He took here the global responsibility for the production network development and Beiersdorf´s global production efficiency program and built and started-up the company’s biggest overseas facility in Mexico. Today Sebastian is leading Beiersdorf’s Supply Chain Transformation and global Engineering overseeing the master planning and Capex program for the production network.

Simon obtained his degree and PhD in organic chemistry from the University of East Anglia, and completed two post-doctoral positions in Lisbon and Birmingham before moving into industry in 2006. After a brief spell working at Pfizer Simon joined SAFC Pharma in early 2007 as a shift chemist on the GMP production plant. Simon’s ability to effectively trouble shoot and identify process improvements gave him the opportunity to progress within SAFC, holding several positions of increasing responsibility before being appointed plant manager. In 2013 Simon made the switch to gene therapy, moving to Oxford Biomedica. As the Vice President, Head of Manufacturing Simon has overseen the expansion the Manufacturing department, increasing production output by eliminating process wastage and through two capacity expansion projects. Five years after bring manufacturing in-house, Oxford Biomedica was approved as the world’s first commercial manufacture of a Lentiviral vector gene therapy and continues to make strides in reducing the cost of ATMP’s by the introduction of its second generation suspension process.

Dr Urbain Bruyere is GSK’s vice president of Environment Health and Safety, Pharma Supply Chain. He has spent most of his career developing global safety and operational risk improvement programmes for the oil and gas and mining sectors. Urbain began his career with BP managing onshore and offshore oil and gas operations. After the 2005 BP Texas City refinery explosion, he was responsible for implementing global programmes to improve safety culture and build leadership and technical capability at production sites. Prior to joining GSK, Bruyere led safety change management at Anglo-American, one of the world’s largest mining companies. In 2013, he earned a BP-sponsored doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, researching how teams achieve safety and efficiency by adapting to real-world complexity. He is a chartered engineer and a fellow of the Institute of Chemical Engineers.

Supporting the top team in major changes in company’s strategy and operating model Critical friend’ on value agenda, agile, corporate culture and talent development Led a multiple projects in strategy consulting and automotive industry Professional interests include change management, business model innovations, agile, talent management MBA at Alliance Manchester Business School, PhD in political science