Speakers

Alex Samchenko

Alex Samchenko

Ind. 4.0 Transformation/ PI Engineering Leader

Alex Samchenko

Alex Samchenko has multiple roles at semiconductors and medical devices global companies. Driving Ind. 4.0 transformation at Philips Medical systems MR business unit. As part of this role, he is leading and supporting the introduction of Process and Data automation globally at several sites of our business. He was also consulting and having a governance role on Industry 4.0 processes evaluation and improvements for several Start-up companies.

Nitin Kaushik

Nitin Kaushik

Head of Digital Manufacturing

Nitin Kaushik

Nitin Kaushik is a business leader with 20+ plus years of exposure in technology & Supply chain Domain. He is experienced in IT Operations, Business Operations, Supply Chain Management, Program/Project Management, Vendor Management, Budgeting & Control.  He has proven ability to partner with CXO and Top Management in a complex environment; Excellent ability to transform business requirements and expectations to results using technology.  His rich exposure in creating & managing Shared Service Centre (SSC), Transformation projects, 24×7 global service delivery and creating high performance teams. He is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and Black-belt in 6 Sigma. By qualification, an Electronics Engineer, with management training from IIT Kanpur.

Tobias Helberg

Tobias Helberg

Partner Smart Factory & Industry 4.0

Tobias Helberg

Tobias Helberg studied technical cybernetics in Stuttgart and is Partner at Porsche Consulting with global responsibility for Smart Factory & Industry 4.0. Since 2016, he has played a key role in shaping the vision, strategy and implementation of Smart Factory at Porsche’s plants in Zuffenhausen and Leipzig. In addition to the activities at Porsche, he defined the strategy of Volkswagen’s Industrial Cloud for scaling digital solutions within and outside the Volkswagen Group.

His experience reaches beyond the Volkswagen Group, since he was responsible for numerous Smart Factory projects in consumer goods, aviation and life science companies.

Dr. Walter Huber

Dr. Walter Huber

Director PMT ME/Production

Dr. Walter Huber

In his professional positions at Siemens, Staufen AG, MT Aerospace and currently Webasto, Dr. Walter Huber is primarily responsible for strategic changes on the Production side. He is currently employed at Webasto as a director in the production area/manufacturing engineering with a main focus on Smart Factory globally. In the course of his professional activity he has implemented more than 30 Industry 4.0 projects and transformed several companies towards Industry 4.0. Two books have also been published by Springer Verlag “Industrie 4.0 in der Automobilproduktion” and “Wie Technologien unsere Wirtschaft und unsere Unternehmen verändert”

Arqum Ahmad

Arqum Ahmad

Specialist - Digital Factory

Arqum Ahmad

Arqum Ahmad Currently, he is working as a Digital Factory Specialist with CTIO at Leonardo Italy and using his expertise to define and implement Digital Factory Solutions in A&D.

In the past, he co-founded Antrax Labs, which helped many customers to increase efficiency & productivity by digitizing the manufacturing processes.

His engaging speaking demonstrated as a past speaker in tech congress and events showcase his ability to enlighten audiences on the significance of digitalization in manufacturing.”

Erika Pärn

Erika Pärn

Senior Research Associate

Erika Pärn

Dr. Erika A. Pärn [PhD, BSc (Hons), PgCE, PgCR] is a Senior Research Associate at University of Cambridge supporting the Civil Engineering Department CIT Lab and Cambridge Service Alliance at IfM.  Her most recent research project with EPSRC investigates digital twinning of steel frame structures for more circular assessment of products’ lifecycle. Previously whilst working in industry, she led multiple research project technical deliverables for the EU commission such as the two H2020 initiatives:  GreenInstruct and BIMERR and a UKRI project SeismPrecast. Erika’s own research interests focus predominantly upon the multi-disciplinary area of digital twins in a digital built environment, but she remains actively involved in other broader ‘construction and civil engineering management’ and business and strategy management topics whilst working with international colleagues.  Prior to her career in academia, she gained professional qualifications and first-hand industrial experience whilst being employed by several architectural practices and working on a range of commercial, residential and logistics projects as an Architectural Technologist.  Together with CIT her ambition now is to move AECO sector closer to the precipice of adopting digital twins to support intelligent asset management. With CSA she hopes to share knowledge on successful business outcomes of digital twin based products and services across sectors.

Nathan Eskue

Nathan Eskue

Professor, Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing

Nathan Eskue

Nathan is an aerospace engineering professor at TU Delft, specializing in AI, robotics, manufacturing, project/business management, and rapid iteration prototyping.  He holds degrees in business information systems, marketing, operations management, an MBA, and a masters of Data Science from Columbia University.  Nathan has spoken at over 60 international conferences on AI, aerospace/defense, quantum, and other technical topics.  He’s worked for NASA, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and other aerospace organizations for over twenty years, with experience in product development, project management, supply chain, manufacturing, and AI architecture.

Dr. Satyajit Wattamwar

Dr. Satyajit Wattamwar

Data Science & Digital Expertise Leader

Dr. Satyajit Wattamwar

Dr.Satyajit Wattamwar is Data Science (Analytics) & Digital Leader enabling digital transformation of production plant processing/manufacturing operations, packaging, formulation & R&D innovation processes. He is product Owner of in-house Data Science cloud platform and process analytics capability. He leads for X-country, x- category, x-capability data science programs, data science strategy, data science teams and stakeholder management in matrix org. He manages data science programs spread across digital packaging, processing and formulations towards realizing the potential of digital transformations!

Hussein Tarhini

Hussein Tarhini

Additive Manufacturing Research

Hussein Tarhini

Hussein Tarhini  is a PHD candidate and a consultant who supports companies in realizing their additive manufacturing (AM) potential by identifying viable AM scenarios and implementing them. His PHD research focuses on methodological approaches for business model identification and implementation in AM. As the previous leader of the Additive Academy at Fraunhofer IAPT, he provided professional training, knowledge transfer, and consultancy for companies in various industrial fields. He holds degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Politecnico di Torino in Italy and Mechanical Engineering and Management from the Technical University of Hamburg (TUHH) in Germany. Mr. Tarhini specialized laser-based AM systems with hands on experience in process development and optimization as well as process monitoring and quality assurance. Mr. Tarhini has a managed multiple national and EU-projects which focused on research and development for AM.

Nicolas Lehment

Nicolas Lehment

Principal System Architect

Nicolas Lehment

Dr. Nicolas Lehment is the principal system architect at NXP’s Industrial System Innovation group. In this role he provides technical guidance on strategic topics such as ML/AI, functional safety and connectivity for industrial automation. Before joining NXP he designed cutting-edge computer vision and robotics systems for ABB and Smartray. He has collaborated on research papers for topics ranging from ML-driven video classification over human pose tracking to collaborative robotics. This academic work earned him a doctoral degree at the Technische Universität München.

Gladis Araujo

Gladis Araujo

VP of Global Quality Systems & Supply Chain

Gladis Araujo

Gladis Araujo is an accomplished Board Member, C-level, and senior leader specialized in global sustainable supply chains, procurement, manufacturing, quality, and testing laboratories management. Her progressive career has seen her posted to different territories and cultures from APAC and EMEA to the Americas/LATAM leading transformational project, opening new markets, start up new manufacturing sites, integration and turnover of operations. She currently works at Mattel Inc. as Global Quality and Supply Chain Vice-president driving the digital transformation for the company, nearshoring initiatives, and value networks.Gladis is an award winning Corporate and Social Responsibility ambassador. She has a bachelor’s in Chemical and Systems Engineering (Tecnologicode Monterrey), a master’s in Quality and Manufacturing (Tecnologico de Monterrey), a master’s in Organizational Development (Universidad de Monterrey), a master’s in International Management (Thunderbird University) and currently she is working in her dissertation for the doctorate grade in Business Administration in the University of Phoenix.

Asdrúbal Pichardo

Asdrúbal Pichardo

CEO

Asdrúbal Pichardo

Asdrúbal is a senior technology executive with a broad and unique combination of experience in growing solutions, business units, markets and revenues. He’s currently the CEO of Vernaio, a SaaS AI company focusing on improving the overall effectiveness and productivity in continuous and batch industry processes. Prior to Vernaio, he was the CEO of FactoryPal, a corporate Start-Up offering a SaaS solution to increase manufacturing efficiency by leveraging AI and IoT technology. Before joining FactoryPal, he was the EVP & GM Europe at Corporator, a global SaaS company which empowers medium and large organizations to continually improve business performance. He also spent 12 years at SAP, Europe’s largest Software company, where he held several leadership positions. In addition to management and executive education at MIT and INSEAD, Asdrúbal holds Computer Science and a M.Sc. degree in Advanced Computing from King’s College London.

Neil D'Souza

Neil D'Souza

Founder & CEO

Neil D'Souza

Neil is the founder of Makersite, and he plays a vital part in our success. He is passionate about applying data to understand and solve tough societal challenges. Having worked on over 200 customer projects over 16 years, Neil is recognized as a leading expert in the industry. A technologist at heart, he has built industry-leading products and grown winning teams. Before Makersite, Neil was CTO at Thinkstep, the leader in sustainability solutions, where he built their corporate solution suite.

Artem Panfilov

Artem Panfilov

Digital Consulting Lead

Artem Panfilov

Artem Panfilov has more than 20 years of expertise in the field of software development. He began his career as a web developer before moving into project and product management. He now spends more time working directly with technology on digital strategy and transformation initiatives. He has been successful in creating various solution competencies and solution practices from scratch over the past few years.

Seonhi Ro

Seonhi Ro

Industry 4.0 Specialist

Seonhi Ro

Industry 4.0 in the manufacturing sector, Ford R&A Europe Expert “Seonhi Ro” who is renowned for her incredible experiences of 20 years at Ford Motor Company, 8 years Vaillant heating device PhD in mechanical engineering at Braunschweig Technical University, GermanyManufacturing analytics (GDIA) manager, Business operating manager for European powertrain (PT) manufacturing, CD car PT integration supervisor, and product cycle planning supervisor in PD, Vaillant’s research engineer and project manager. A professional leader with extensive technical and business knowledge. Connectivity between new technologies, data analytics, and business applications in the automotive industry, in particular.

Gamze Erdogan

Gamze Erdogan

Global Business Development Director

Gamze Erdogan

Global Business Development Director / Smart Manufacturing Gamze Erdoğan- M.Sc, MBA – has worked in the automotive industry for 15+ years after graduating from Master of Mechanical Engineering. Over the last 3 years, she has been using OT expertise at Lenovo to understand and support Lenovo customers on their OT / IT convergence journey.

Jörg Walther

Jörg Walther

Technical Sales Architect

Jörg Walther

Jörg Walther has been with Lenovo for 6 years as a Technical Consultant in the Workstation Team. He is also an expert for AI, Edge & Edge AI, and AR/VR Consulting. Previously, he worked for 11 years in different areas at Intel as an Enterprise Technology Consultant. Jörg has published 18 books as well as numerous technical articles.

Kai Hackbarth

Kai Hackbarth

Senior Technology Evangelist

Kai Hackbarth

Kai Hackbarth is Senior Technology Evangelist at Bosch Global Software Technologies. In his prior role Kai was Business Owner Industrial at Bosch.IO. He has more than 20 years of experience as an Evangelist & Product Manager with a focus on IoT middleware and device management in many different domains, such as Smart Home, Industrial IoT, Automotive. Kai has been active in various standardization initiatives. He was in the Board of Directors and Chair of the Residential Expert Group at OSGi Alliance as well as Chair of the Over-the-Air Special Interest Group at the Industrial Internet Consortium. Kai was among the Onalytica “Top 100 IIoT Influencers” in 2020 as well as Onalytica’s Who is Who in IoT report 2022 in the category Brand employees.

Adrian Sebastian Palk

Adrian Sebastian Palk

Manager - Digital Manufacturing & Industry 4.0

Adrian Sebastian Palk

Adrian Sebastian Palka, a manufacturing lead with experience in digital transformation, lean manufacturing, manufacturing engineering, and product costing, will be our keynote speaker. He has a track record of putting Lean principles into practice, creating Digital Transformation Strategies, and implementing Smart Factory solutions. He will give our guests the necessary knowledge on how to undertake digital transformation in the right way. He will comprehend that the Digital Leads network is focused on the issue of human-centered and skill-focused digital transformation. He will discuss on Democratizing the usage of technology in JCI’s manufacturing plants and how to make technology use more accessible at JCI’s industrial facilities. Both large-scale and small-scale digitization are laying the foundation for the future by closing the existing “digital gap.”