Experienced Industrial and Plant Director with a demonstrated history of working in the mining & metals industry and mechanical industry. Skilled in Negotiation, Business Planning, Operations Management, Management, and Continuous Improvement. Strong operations professional graduated from MIP-Politecnico Di Milano.

Inspire action, improve results together and make work more fun. That is the vision Ariane used in her different senior management positions, with proven results. In 2014, she co-wrote the book ‘Improving Results Together’ with leaders sharing the same vision of Inspirational Leadership. Ariane frequently writes articles about this topic and speaks fervidly about it at conferences. After 15 years of senior management positions, Ariane recently became a partner at Synergie, a consultancy firm working on creating inspiring organizations with impact. Inspired employees are over twice as productive than satisfied employees. Let alone dissatisfied employees. How do you lead with purpose? To enable your teams to work with passion again and are inspired to action? That they want to grow personally, but also as a team, and by doing so also growing the organization. Synergie works on inspiring organizations with impact. Organizations which deserve the attention of the (labor) market instead of asking for it, and know how to convert this ambition into concrete impact. We combine 25 years of experience with the insights of 10 years of research to the most inspiring companies. In her last management position within Philips, Ariane empowered the local Customer Services team, comprising of 250 people (Field service engineers, Technical Support, Call Centre etc.) to improve the margin by making the complete team responsible for the end results (more satisfied customers, improved sales and margin and more satisfied colleagues). By getting this responsibility, it inspired the team to take that extra mile, and also dramatically increased employee satisfaction. At Vodafone, where she was responsible for the Small Medium Enterprise segment (customers of 10-500 FTE) and Internet of Things, she transformed the teams from SIM-card selling to solution selling, using the Vodafone way of mobile working as a role model for customers to adopt. As an inspirational leader, Ariane improves results with a stronger team, connecting with all layers in the organization. With her technical background she analyses processes in order to be able to make data-driven decisions for improvement, whilst having the empathic leadership to convince and lead the team towards improving these processes. Ariane Roos is a frequently asked speaker at conferences where she passionately speaks about inspirational leadership: empower the customer facing people to optimally do their job and truly inspire them to action.

Armin Schwab shows and lives Passion for Production and People Lean expert, with more than 20 years in several functions in production, logistics and corporate functions, thereof 10 years in foreign assignments to USA, Mexico and Spain. Benchmark visits and lean projects in over 100 Bosch production plants worldwide and various supplier plants.

Arturo Galvan studied Mechanical Engineering in his native Mexico and started his professional career in the cement industry holding several positions in maintenance including Maintenance Manager, implementing the TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) and RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance) Initiatives. After a Masters in International Production Management at the Technical University in Hamburg, Arturo joined Nestlé as TPM Coordinator in Switzerland, following a corporate TPM role for Germany and Netherlands based in Frankfurt, supporting more than 8 Factories on their TPM implementation. After being Factory Manager for two years in Soest, Germany, Arturo took over in 2016 the Factory Management of Nestlé’s Hamburg Chocolate Factory, the largest chocolate factory of Nestlé in the Zone EMENA. He is married and has one daughter and one son.

Bart started his career in 2000 in the chemical industry in which he is still active today. At present he is site director at Prayon. Bart is experienced in the re-organization of production facilities while focusing on continuous improvement. Born in Hasselt (Belgium) in June 1972, married and father of 3 daughters. Degrees in Bio-Engineering and PhD in Applied Biological Sciences from the university of Leuven. An executive MBA and master in corporate finance from the Vlerick, Leuven-Gent management School.

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.

For 16 years I was working in General Motors Opel Polska where I held different positions managing Plant Health&Safety, Body Shop, Paint Shop, General Assembly and Supply Chain – Material Handling Departments. Apart from that I was European SME and Lead Auditor on Standardization within General Motors Manufacturing System which was a reflection of TPS. Then for next 2 years I joined Danone as a Manufacturing Manager and this year I decided to lead 2 manufacturing plants as Plants Director in Virtu – a polish FMCG company.

Prof. Ceglarek received his Ph.D. in ME from Univ of Michigan-Ann Arbor in 1994. Prior to joining Warwick, he was Full Professor with tenure in the ISyE at Univ of Wisconsin–Madison, USA. Since 2007 he is Professor & EPSRC Star Research Chair at U-Warwick, UK. Prof. Ceglarek is a CIRP Fellow. He served as Chair of Quality, Statistics & Reliability Section of INFORMS; Program Chair for ASME Design-for-Manufacturing Life Cycle Conferences, Assoc. Editor of IEEE Trans. (TASE), and ASME Trans., J. of Manuf Systems & Engg; and UK rep in the Implementation Support Group of ManuFUTURE EU Technology Platform. He is founder & head of the Digital Lifecycle Management Group at Warwick dedicated to research on Factory-of-the-Future & Hospital-of-the-Future. He has published over 150 papers, received 4 Best Papers Awards with 12 papers in Top-1% of the most cited in engineering journals. His research is funded by EPSRC, EU-FP7, US-NSF, US NIST-ATP, Jaguar LandRover, GE, Hexagon, Motorola, Chrysler, etc. He has 3 patents, his research has resulted in 2 spinouts and his research have been adopted by companies worldwide (e.g InSite™ OnWatch used by GE-HC for remoter diagnostics of all their CT/MRI worldwide; 2mm/stream-of-variation dimensional variation reduction by Chrysler, GM, etc.). He has graduated 21 PhD students many of whom hold tenure track faculty positions in lead research universities (USA, Australia, China) & key industry positions. He has received numerous awards including UK EPSRC 2007 STAR Award (granted to an “exceptional senior faculty, recognised international leader in his/her research field”); US NSF 2003 CAREER Award (NSF's ”most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research”); 1999 Outstanding Research Scientist Award from CoE, U-Michigan; 1998 Dell K. Allen Outstanding Young Manuf Engineer of the Year Award from SME.

Deborah Sherry is the Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer of GE Digital in Europe. Her mission is to deliver the next industrial revolution. Her division delivers cloud-based solutions that connect industry, transforming industrial businesses into digital industrial businesses. It generates insights from machines and translates data to intelligence to drive step-change improvement in productivity. Prior to joining GE, Deborah spent nearly 9 years at Google. She led divisions across EMEA, opened new markets and increased business 5-fold for Google. Before joining Google, Deborah spent 7 years in the France Telecom Group (now Orange) running multi-platform portal and advertising businesses and global platform convergence efforts. Deborah also worked at Samsung, based in the Chairman’s office in Korea, driving transformation across Samsung Electronics and other Samsung companies, and she worked at Citibank in London. Deborah has an MBA from the London Business School, an MA (Hons) Law from Oxford University and a BA from Columbia University. Outside of the day job, Deborah has held a variety of roles in industry and in the community. As a key player and recognised expert in the digital industry, Deborah was invited to join the Made Smarter Commission set up in September 2018 by the British Secretary of State for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy. She is a strong supporter of diversity, promoting equality for women and the LGBT community. She is an avid supporter of Chelsea FC. Deborah has lived on three continents and currently enjoys life in the North Downs of Surrey, England.

• Prof. Dr. Dimitris Kyritsis is Faculty Member at the Institute of Mechanical Engineering of the School of Engineering of EPFL, Switzerland, where he is leading a research group on ICT for Sustainable Manufacturing. His research interests are Closed Loop Lifecycle Management, IoT, Semantic Technologies and Data Analytics for Engineering Applications. He served also as Guest Professor at the IMS Center of the University of Cincinnati, and Invited Professor at the University of Technology of Compiègne, the University of Technology of Belfort-Montbéliard and at ParisTech ENSAM Paris. Prof. Kiritsis is actively involved in EU research programs in the area of Factories of the Future and Enabling ICT for Sustainable Manufacturing. He has more than 200 publications. Since September 2013 Dimitris is Chair of IFIP WG5.7 – Advanced Production Management Systems and from 2013 to 2017 member of the Advisory Group of the European Council on Leadership on Enabling Industrial Technologies – AG LEIT-NMBP. He is also founding fellow member of the International Society for Engineering Asset Management (ISEAM) and of various international scientific communities in his area of interests including EFFRA.

Dirk Borghs graduated as an engineer in Materials Sciences from Leuven University, Belgium. After finishing his Master degree, he worked in the automotive industry for 6 years. In 1993, after finishing his degree in Finance and Marketing in Gent (Belgium), he joined Helvoet Pharma (now integrated in Datwyler Sealing Solutions) in Belgium, as technical manager. After 5 years, Dirk became Head of Global Quality and Engineering, and 3 years later, he moved to the USA (2001-2006) to run the US Operations. As of 2006, Dirk became VP Strategic Projects and Global Procurement. His main successes were the planning and building of the company’s facility with First Line standard in Belgium and the greenfield facility in India. Since 2014, Dirk has been in charge of the main Health Care plant in Belgium and as per September 2015, he moved into the role of Senior Vice President Operations Europe for the Datwyler Sealing Solutions division. Since April 2017, he has been in charge of Global Operations and Supply Chain, covering 18 plants worldwide. The Datwyler Group is a focused industrial supplier with leading positions in global and regional market segments. With its technological leadership and customised solutions, the Group delivers added value to customers in the markets served. The Sealing Solutions division is a leading supplier of custom sealing solutions to global market segments, such as the health care, automotive, civil engineering and consumer goods industries. The Technical Components division is one of Europe’s foremost high-service distributors of maintenance, automation, electronic and ICT components and accessories. With a total of some 50 operating companies, sales in over 100 countries and more than 7’500 employees, the Datwyler Group generates annual revenue of some CHF 1’300 million (www.datwyler.com).

Ferdi Aksoy is a General Manager at Yazaki Europe and responsible for Eastern Europe Operations with a huge diversity with local regulations, cultural differences and additionally different customer portfolio. As Yazaki Europe Regional Head at the area of Eastern Europe, currently managing “Eastern Europe Operations ” of Yazaki Europe with 6 plants at 4 different country as Head of Operations with an expertise in managing the Operations for the wire harness production plants with respect to “Lean Manufacturing System” with the goal of achieving Excellence at Manufacturing.

Fernando was born in Cádiz (Spain) in 1974 and was graduated at Escuela Superior de Ingenieros Industriales de Sevilla. He joined Elecnor in 2000 and one year later started to work in Airbus where he has focused his career in production of machined parts, aeronautic structures and Aircraft Final Assembly Lines of C295 and A400M. His next step took him for 3 years to Indonesia to support the industrialization of the local aeronautic industry for military transport aircrafts. Moving after for another 3 years to Saudi Arabia as the CEO of an Airbus subsidiary providing training and maintenance services to Airbus D&S airplanes. Since 2017 moved back to Spain to manage the automated production lines of B737 and A320 Fan Cowls Doors. Today Fernando is using the Industry 4.0 waves to achieve the great challenge of producing aeronautic structures at 2,5 hours taken time always with the highest quality standard.

Frank is a Research and Development Manager in the Process and Automation team. He is currently working from AECOM’s Stuttgart, Germany offices while closely collaborating with his colleagues in Swindon and the UK. Frank did his PhD studies in the field of Bioinformatics and Computer Science. In his role, Frank is responsible to drive innovation and increase collaboration between AECOM and institutes such as Germany’s Fraunhofer Institutes. Furthermore, Frank is leading projects in the Industry 4.0 sector as Project Manager for Clients in the Auromotive industry. Here, Frank focuses on aspects of continuous improvements augmented by digitization. Additionally to his role as Project Manager, Frank has broad knowledge as a data scientist. His area of work include data analysis, data visualization and machine learning. Recently, he worked on developing continuous improvement principles involving Lessons Learnt as well as autonomous logistics, connected production and nesting production processes.

Frédéric Moret is currently worldwide industrial director of Faurecia Interiors, one of the 3 business groups of Faurecia automotive tier-1, billing 6 B€ per year, and managing 85 plants around the world. Digital Transformation of Faurecia Interior is in his scope. Before, Frédéric occupied a similar position in Valeo Lighting, after having been in charge of the management of production and engineering departments in Valeo, CEA (energy engineering) and SNECMA (aerospace). Frédéric has an engineering degree from Ecole des Mines, a PhD in physics from INPG, and a business grade from INSEAD.

Henning Lindemann is a Sales Manager at Celonis and is responsible for manufacturing companies. He works with many well-known customers such as Siemens, SCHOTT and Knauf and supports them in making their IT-based processes more efficient with Celonis Process Mining. He holds a degree in International Cultural and Business Studies from the University of Passau and worked previously as an Account Manager at Bosch, SAS and prevero (Unit4).

Hervé is heading up the Prometeon group’s global Industrial Engineering operations . With more than 17 years of of experience in industrial engineering and manufacturing across a number of European Tier 1 companies, Hervé Ghesquières’ career has been built around creating and improving the operational efficiency of organisations. Hervé has worked on the industrial footprint of companies that have production facilities in order to improve the competitiveness, considering the product lines, the capacity and capabilities of the processes. This experience saw Pirelli headhunt Ghesquières back in 2011 to join the company’s Milan headquarters, in order to create an organisation of industrial efficiency and increase the competitiveness of the company. Since 2016, since Chemchina bought Pirelli and that Prometeon Tyre group was created, the manufacturing systems and efficiency systems merge between Chemchina Tyre division and Prometeon was entrusted to Hervé Ghesquières.

ilker is coordinating the Smart Manufacturing and Flexible Factory programme implementation in Pirelli Tyres. He has worked in Germany, Romania plants and he is managing Industrial Engineering and Pirelli Manufacturing System activities from 2016 in Milano headquarters. He enjoys basketball and spending his free time with family and his 2 kids.

Dr Srai is Head of the Centre for International Manufacturing, Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge. He has Director/Investigator roles across several major multi-disciplinary research projects, bringing an engineering and strategic operations management perspective to the design, analysis and operation of international supply chains. Research projects explore the disruptive impacts of new production and digital technologies on supply chains, markets and regulation, involving close collaborations with industry, academia, and public bodies. Jag also advises leading multinationals, governments and international institutions including UNCTAD, UNIDO, WEF. Previous roles were in industry with Unilever working as a Supply Chain Director of a multinational regional business, Technical Director of a national business and other senior management positions. Dr Srai holds a first-class honours degree in Chemical Engineering from Aston University, MPhil and PhD degrees in International Supply Networks from Cambridge University, is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the Institute of Chemical Engineers.

Javier Blanco has more than 20 years of experience in program delivery in Bridgestone EMEA across the retail, supply chain, human resources and manufacturing functions. He is now focused on building the digital manufacturing roadmap and supporting the Smart Factory program within EMEA.

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.

Kari Terho is Director and Head of Smart Factory Management, 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.

Lars has been working in the automotive industry since 1994. The Technical Development, Production planning, Production, Quality assurance and Custom Service are well known to him. He worked in different positions including Senior Management, Consulting, Coaching Programme- and Project Management. Lars joined AECOM as Head of Technology Process and Automation EMIA in 2017 to strengthen the knowledge of automotive industry and Industry 4.0 within AECOM. He has successfully worked with OEM’s like Audi, BMW, Daimler, FAW, FAW-Volkswagen, Jaguar Land Rover, Magna Steyr, Porsche, Skoda, and Volkswagen, in Europe, China and in the USA. In the last 6 years his focus was on Consulting, Coaching, and Project Management of the automotive industry all over the world. He is known as a technical expert ranging from concept design and planning till realization of the planned projects, and has got extensive intercultural skills. He also regularly holds discourses on conferences and on management seminars about future manufacturing and manufacturing technologies.

Born in Cartagena (Spain) in 1983, he graduated with a Msc in Telecommunications Engineering. Luis is a digital transformation enabler comfortable with complexity, with passion for practical problem solving and obsessed with company efficiency and automation in all areas. He has held numerous leadership roles in the last 10 years both in international companies, medium companies and start-ups having an excellent balance of technical knowledge and management skills. Currently he is working in the agricultural industry as IT Director of Agroherni, being responsible for implementing Industry 4.0 roadmap across the company. Prior to that he's held managing positions at Gemalto, world leader providing digital security products and services worldwide, where contributed to successful international projects on IoT, QoE, Cybersecurity and Cloud infrastructures.

Martyn is a Manufacturing Quality & Metrologist Specialist by trade. Having spent his formative years running his own business in metrology and quality, he worked closely with global companies across the manufacturing verticals, specialising in the promotion of Manufacturing Intelligence Systems within the automotive, aerospace and packaging industries. Having been involved in measuring system development and project management and the promotion thereof, Martyn fully appreciates ‘what it takes’ to make a success without having to unnecessarily expend huge sums of money. Martyn calls himself ‘a disciple of manufacturing’ and is a great believer in the value behind developing new ideas for improving processes and inspection to achieve world-class manufacturing, without having to sacrifice people and company’s principles. Advising and assisting modern-day ambitions by those seeking to achieve Smart Manufacturing and the Digital Factory, now form a major part of Martyn’s activity today.

Michele was appointed Chief Commercial Officer of ATS Global on 1st of February 2018. He joined ATS Global in 2014, with the role of Business Development Manager and Business Consultant for the discrete manufacturing sector. He has been helping blue chip manufacturing companies defining Smart Manufacturing strategies and long-term digitalization roadmaps, building clear business cases, solving manufacturing system challenges, and achieving the planned business benefits. Before joining ATS Global, Michele has been working in the Centre of Competence of a leading MOM (Manufacturing Operations Management) software vendor, with responsibilities in Solution Delivery and Consultancy for leading manufacturing companies. He has broad experience in the discrete manufacturing industry sector, varying from automotive and aerospace to industrial machinery and electronics. He has presented papers on a broad range of subjects at many industry and research events. Michele is qualified with a PhD in Computer Engineering from the University of Genova (Italy) and Master of Science in Physics from the same university.

Red thread in his career is data for business optimisation, from Operational Excellence (L6S) to Digital Transformation. He has over 10 years broad industry experience in Aerospace, Chemical and FMCG. Functionally he has experience in Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Innovation (incl. startups), Business Development and Line Management. He holds a PhD in Aerospace Engineering, a MSc in Physics & Astronomy and is certified (Master) Black Belt.

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.

Phil’s career spans thirty-two plus years’ of business and manufacturing leadership. Phil’s diverse background ranges from multiple leadership roles in manufacturing to successfully working with and leading several business units within Milliken & Company to profitable growth and financial sustainability. Phil’s background includes leading the implementation of the Milliken Performance System, serving as Director of Cost Improvement and as the corporate Pursuit of Excellence Director. Phil holds a degree in Industrial Engineering from Clemson University and a Master of Business Administration from Wake Forest University.

Raffaello Lepratti is the VP, Business Development and Marketing within the Manufacturing Operations Management Software Business of Siemens PLM Software. Manufacturing Operations Management is one of the main business of Siemens' Industry Software offering. After some years of experience in the German Car Manufacturing, in 2005 Raffaello Lepratti joint Siemens and owned different positions in Product Management and Marketing. In 2010 he took on the HQ responsibility of account management automotive industry for Factory Automation. Since 2015 he is part of Siemens PLM Software organization. He has a degree in electrical engineering and owns a PhD in Human Machine Collaboration. Over the years, he worked on several international research projects related to automotive manufacturing and is the author of books, scientific papers and magazine articles. He is coowner of several patents in the area of automotive applied research.

Dr Ralf Zichner has been Head of the Fraunhofer ENAS department Printed Functionalities since October 2017. He is also Head of the division “Smart Production”. He joined the Fraunhofer Institute for Electronic Nano Systems ENAS in Chemnitz as a researcher in 2009. His main research focus lies on the design, simulation, printing, and experimental analysis of radio frequency components. After completing his postdoc in 2013, he was promoted to Fraunhofer Forschungsmanager.

Reinhold Gietl since more than 16 years manages one of the most modern and capable sites of the Pilkington / NSG Group for manufacturing Float Glass. After university with the degree of an electrical engineer he spent 12 years as an Officer in the German Army. Managing and leading people at an early stage he soon was well known in his positive way of leading people. After changing from state to the private industry in 1989 he kept over many years several leadership positions with temporary employments abroad in France and UK. He is well known for his competency and professional skills in winning and motivating people, particularly in difficult times. He is 61 years old, married with three grown-up children.

Sergio Ros started in May 16 as the Managing Director of Agroherni, company founded 20 years ago which employees 700 people with a turnover of 30M€. Previously he successfully led as a Global Director a Lean Culture Programme at a multinational agricultural business (G’s Fresh )with operations in 6 countries and more than 6000 employees over 5 years. He reported directly to the CEO and the property and was part of the board. Having studied Telecommunications and Industrial Engineering at the University, he started his professional career at Faurecia, a leading automotive supplier, where he obtained great training and experience about lean before taking up the challenge of carrying out lean implementations as a consultant on over 20 companies in 6 different sectors for 5 years.

Sezin Taskin is working in area of operational excellence for more than 10 years, executing Lean programs in various cultures leading skilled professionals with multi-cultural backgrounds. Her mechanical engineering career began at automotive division of Bosch Turkey. In 2006 she joined SIEMENS and worked as project manager and head of manufacturing for Medium Voltage Systems Turkey until 2011, was qualified in Siemens Production System as the first 20 alumni among 1000+ senior experts. Sezin experienced Lean governance role in Siemens corporate level and working in headquarter with wide Lean community until joining business unit Transformers as Segment Lean Program Manager. Her current role in China is driving Lean & Digitalization activities among 36 factories of Siemens Transmission Products, worldwide.

Based in the UK, Simon currently leads Lean transformation activities at UTC Aerospace Systems. His approach to operational excellence has been developed predominantly through Tier 1 supply to Toyota on a ‘JIT’ basis and through the Womack influenced Lean turnaround approach at UTC. Simon’s qualifications include a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters in Engineering Business Management. He is a Six Sigma Black Belt, a Chartered Engineer (IMechE), and Project Management Professional (PMP). His industry experience covers Programme Management, General management, Leadership Development, and Quality and Continuous Improvement. Outside work Simon enjoys time with his wife and 2 children and indulging in his passion for sailing, windsurfing, and mountain biking.

Simon Jacobson is a Vice President in Gartner's supply chain research organization and covers manufacturing operations. Mr. Jacobson advises clients responsible for manufacturing strategy and performance. His research helps clients develop transformational roadmaps for smart manufacturing and the role production plays in digital supply chains. This spans the foundational competencies of corporate production systems to the impacts of artificial intelligence, IoT, and advanced analytics on how factories can be managed in the future.

Professor Banerji received his BTech degree in Mechanical Engineering and his MTech degree in Industrial Engineering from IIT Kharagpur. He was awarded an ICI Commonwealth Scholarship and studied for his PhD in Operations Research at Cambridge and the University of Manchester. Professor Banerji is now responsible for all education programmes at WMG, including Full-Time Masters, Professional and Executive Programmes and Overseas Programmes. Before joining WMG, Professor Banerji spent more than 30 years with IBM, publishing 80 major internal papers and winning numerous awards for his work. He was CIO and Vice-President of IBM (India) where he increased the revenue, profits and employee numbers dramatically. He created a major centre in Bangalore to provide IT services in the USA and Europe. Professor Banerji moved from industry to academia in 2004 when he became Practice Associate Professor of Operations Management at Singapore Management University. In 2010, Professor Banerji was presented with the Glory of India Award by the India International Friendship Society.

Uwe has more than 25 years experience in the manufacturing environment and with industrial software and automation products. He spent 5 years as an application engineer with Schiess a major manufacturer of heavy machine tool builder before he started to be involved of developing the first Industrial pc´s and the use of pc equipment to control and optimize palletize systems. Prior to Incuity and Wonderware, Uwe has built up the sales area for an engineering company and sold automation solution to all kinds of manufacturing segments. After running his own business Uwe joined Wonderware in 1994 as regional sale manager in the west part of Germany. 1995 he moved to the head quarter in the US to develop the OEM program. In this timeframe Uwe gained also international expirience in Asia. Since 1997 he was leading the sales organization of the German operation including the ERP and Maintenance sales which came through Wonderware in 1999. January 2001 he took over the position as managing director in Scandinavia where he was building up the new entity which was created in April 2001 with a clear focus on adding value to their customers business. In 2003 Uwe became the additional responsibility of the German operation as Managing Director. April 2005 he exepted the position as Director Business Development and Marketing EMEA where he was responsible for extending the established markets and grow new emergency market segments or area. Together with his Marketing manager he developed the marketing strategies for Wonderware in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. His primary goal was to grow significant the business in EMEA as well as identifying new potential business segments. Since Jan 2014 Uwe was also appointed to the Chairman of the EMEA board of Mesa International a non profitable association focusing since more than 20 years on Manufacturing. Uwe Kueppers is married and has a son and a daughter.

Top level executive with longstanding global experience leading Medical Device companies to best in class. • Professional with Strategic thinking leadership, decision-making ability; high business acumen, sharp results orientation, flexibility and pragmatism • Solid and successful career in Operations, international experience developed in several business (Medical Devices, Automotive, Furniture, Chemicals) • Ability to build high performance teams by attracting top talent and inspiring them to increase long-term value while delivering outstanding short-term results, built upon integrity and high ethical standards • Open and participative style of leadership; goal oriented with a high level of commitment • Capable to develop and drive Operational excellence with emphasis on cost control. Able to develop and implement industrial plans to become centre of excellence in the industry (automation, Lean-6σ, etc.) • Customer satisfaction improvement through global Supply Chain management, high quality standard and inventory reduction Relevant expertise in Operations Management, with plants' responsibility in Europe, North and South America, Australia