| Speakers

Adrian is leading the Product Lifecycle Management practice at EY.  He has gained in depth experience leading numerous PLM, SCM, IoT, Sales and Marketing transformation projects at leading industrial companies from various sectors.  After studying molecular biology in Basel, he did his PhD at the University of Freiburg

Alfred Katzenbach works as an independent Executive Consultant, focusing on product development methods and tools. In parallel he teaches at University of Stuttgart “Information Technology and Knowledge Management for PD”. Before Alfred started his consultancy career, he was been Director and CIO for Product Development at Daimler for around 15 years. Alfred Katzenbach is member of different advisory boards and member of “German Scientific Community for Product Development”. Alfred got the 2014 Leadership Award from CIE Division of American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME).

Andrew Lodge is the current Head of Engineering Systems at JCB, in charge of the global implementation and day-to-day maintenance of PLM systems and processes. He brings a wealth of experience to the table, having worked across all sides of the industry, from PLM vendors, through system integrators to end-user manufacturers. JCB is one of Britain’s most successful engineering exports with manufacturing locations in 150 countries and an employee base of 12000. 

Starting in the UK Royal Navy (Fleet Air Arm), Andrew learnt the value of data control, ensuring the right information was available to the right people at the right time. Following the Royal Navy, he took a career in Aerospace and focussed on finding ways to enable design/data control. He then worked in several different organisations including GKN Westlands, Bae Systems, Fairchild Dornier in various configuration roles, eventually arriving in Airbus D&S in their Earth Observation and Science Business Line as the Head of Data Management for the UK.

Bill Chown is currently CIO of INCOSE, the International Council on Systems Engineering, which represents over 12000 Systems Engineers worldwide and leads the enabling, promoting, and advancing of Systems Engineering and systems approaches. A thirty-plus year technology industry veteran, Bill specializes in the application of system-level design and analysis and MBSE across technology disciplines and has a particular interest in standards for systems engineering and design. 

Brian has been with L3 TRL for 6 years and leading the PLM activities for the last 3 years. The PLM environment at L3 TRL has gone from a proof of concept to a live environment and is now in a phase where TRL are implementing additional capabilities and aligning processes across the lifecycle such as systems engineering, ALM and manufacturing information. Prior to joining TRL he has over 15 years’ experience in various roles across Engineering, Configuration and Data Management and PDM with some of the major defence and IT service providers in the UK.

Cees Stellema has a PhD in Physics from Delft University of Technology. He joined Unilever in 1998 to develop fat blends for margarine. His professional career can be characterized by a variety of role in the innovation and senior management domain, working in multifunctional teams, partnering with brand and supply chain in technical and leadership roles. Within Unilever, but also with external partners like software service providers, consultants and engineering firms. Cees currently leads the enterprise wide implementation of PLM, creating a new digital working environment for more than 10,000 R&D and Supply chain people.

Prof. Dimitris Kiritsis is a faculty member at the School of Engineering of EPFL and head of the group ICT for Sustainable Manufacturing. He has more than 25 years of research and teaching experience at EPFL, including initiating and leading international research projects in the domain of Closed-Loop Lifecycle Management with applications of product embedded information devices, product lifecycle modelling and simulation, ontology-based engineering, predictive maintenance and engineering asset management as well as sustainable manufacturing. Prof. Kiritsis is also member of several international associations and organisations such as Manufuture-EU, EFFRA, and Manufuture-CH.

Felix Nyffenegger is the Professor for CAx, PLM and Product Design at the University of Applied Sciences Rapperswil (HSR) and a Partner at IPEK (Institute for Product Development & Design). Felix has a deep knowledge of product structures, processes and IT tools in the area of PLM as well as core skills across business processes, product development and IT.

Gerard Litjens, Vice President, EMEA of the management consulting and research firm CIMdata, an internationally recognized authority on PLM, has more than 30 years of experience in Information and Communication Technology, Product and Plant Lifecycle Management. As a CIMdata consultant, Mr. Litjens provides in-depth analysis, strategic and tactical business planning, market and channel development, and training services to a range of IT, PLM, CAD/CAM, and ERP solution providers, systems integrators, and resellers. Mr. Litjens also provides PLM strategy assessments, benefits analysis, system selection, education, training, and implementation planning services to a range of international companies in many discrete and process manufacturing industries.

Gerard Quist has been working in the PLM domain for over 25 years. For the last 5 years he has been the Enterprise IT Platform Manager/Lead Architect for the Idea to Market domain for Philips and involved in the multi-year worldwide transformation program to harmonize processes and simplifying the Philips IT landscape. He is responsible for the simplified IT landscape design and business application selection for the Idea to Market domain, ensuring a seamless integrated E2E information flow between IT systems supporting the PLM process from ideation process up till the integration with the supply chain and marketing organizations.

Mr Håkan Kårdén is CEO and Board Member of Eurostep Group and was one of the founders of Eurostep in 1994. In this role, Mr Kårdén has lead Eurostep through its global expansion and to its current position as world class experts in the design and implementation of standards based PLM collaboration solutions.

Hilmar has been at Mettler Toledo since 2010 as Head of Global PLM. He is currently responsible for driving the transformation of a global market leader in high-precision instruments in the area of Product Lifecycle Management with focus on global collaboration, project management, and integrated R&D tools. He has experience in leadership positions, management consulting, business transformation and change management.

Irene currently works as Head of Process CAD & PDM Development at Volvo Cars R&D.  During her 23 years in Volvo Cars & Volvo IT she has had various roles regarding PLM and external communication.  Among other things Irene was R&D project leader in Ford Integration as well as project leader for the separation project from Ford Motor Company 10 years later.  For a longer period she was head of the PDM Development on the business side. In her current position Irene is heading a department responsible for the business development in CAD and PDM. Having a deep interest in overall PLM, Irene considers the automotive industry as an extremely exiting area to work in and to meet the challenges of PLM in the future.   

Johan has a role as Sr.Manager PLM Strategy at Volvo Cars R&D. He has a long experience from the automotive industry, 5 year at Volvo Cars and 26 years at Saab Automobile. Some of the previous roles was CAE strategy responsible, predicting CAE capacity & Tool setup, a parallel responsibility during that time was also to introduce Systems Engineering at Volvo Car Group. Johan was IT manager Vehicle Engineering & Powertrain + PIO (Process Information Officer) for Global Product Development during several years at Saab Automobile, that included responsibility for all IT operations and development in these areas.

I started TacIT in 1999 with the aim to help customers and software vendors/implementers in areas of knowledge and information management.

•    Since 1999, Jos Voskuil been focusing on PLM best practices and methodology in the first years closely working with SmarTeam Inc in Israel, later acquired by Dassault Systemes.

•    From 2001 till 2008, Jos Voskuil has supported the SmarTeam R&D organization worldwide in building best practices for the High-Tech industry, Regulatory Compliance (FDA), Process Industry and Auto/Aero supply chain, describing methodology and functionality working closely with customers and implementers

•    In 2008, Jos Voskuil started an activity to help stalled PLM implementations by providing an independent, process/methodology view to customers before dealing with the details. These interventions brought and are still bringing a lot of experiences, which Jos Voskuil is sharing in his blog: www.virtualdutchman.com.

•    Since 2010, Jos Voskuil is a frequent speaker at the PLM Innovation/ Product Innovation events, discussing various related topics related to PLM and Innovation and teaching PLM as guest speaker at Arts et métiers ParisTech. The central theme is to make companies aware of the need and the value of digitization and how it affects their businesses

•    More details can be found on the LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/tacit.

Kirsten is a graduate electrical and industrial engineer with extensive experience in the area of mechanical and plant engineering (Sales, Service, Engineering, Product Management). Past positions included operational management of service branches, post-merger activities in elevator manufacturing and wind industry as well as having the commercial responsibility for an international service organization. She was also responsible, Europe-wide, for product management in remote monitoring of products and processes in the elevator manufacturing industry. She led projects in change management, SAP-implementation and the application of strategies in matrix organizations. At Nordex she owns the Engineering processes PDM/PLM, Certification, Intellectual Property and Portfolio Management.

Lewis Horne is CEO and founder of UNITI – Ingenious Electric Car. He is also Head of Social Innovation at Lund University, where he is responsible for the field of Social Innovation, with a focus on ICT driven social innovation, social enterprise (www.sopact.org) and Impact Investing, with a range of engagements with corporate, academic and the public sector. He is passionate about catalysing new trends globally to impact humanity in the most profound manner possible and determined to lead a charge to disrupt global markets and destructive industries.

Marc Hutsch studied mechanical engineering and business management at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern in Germany and at the Universidad del Pacífico in Santiago, Chile. Besides concentrations in B2B marketing, he focused on researching future approaches for open Product Lifecycle Management and the development of cyberphysical systems. After gaining further experience as a PLM Consultant, Marc Hutsch now supports XPLM´s worldwide customers with a broad portfolio of PLM-related IT solutions.

Mark is the IoT and Industrialisation 4.0 lead at Vestas, leading PLM's strategy for IoT as well as looking after IoT framework and system infrastructure within the organisation. Previously, he worked as a data analyst within supply chain and financial information systems sectors, and most recently as an Operations and Supply Chain Specialist at Vestas Wind Systems.

Martin Eigner is Chair of Virtual Product Engineering (VPE) at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern and is a member of multiple advisory boards across various professional and academic associations, including the ProSTEP Association (Automotive), GfSE (German Subsidary of INCOSE), WiGeP (Association of German Institutes for Product Development) and acatech (technical academy).

Martin Rawski is heading the production and automation function at Hello Fresh, where one of his current focuses is to streamline the feedback of end-of-life data into product design and creation. With their unique business model and a start-up approach, Martin and Hello Fresh are revolutionising the way data is used across a product’s lifecycle. Martin Rawski helps companies to become more agile and customer centric using a lean start-up approach with focus on product development and manufacturing. Before he started his consulting company, he headed the Production and Automation function at HelloFresh. In the past, he worked at BMW and A.T. Kearney. One of his focus points is to streamline the feedback of end-of-life data into product development and creation.

Martin van Hecke got his PhD in theoretical physics in 1996 at the University of Leiden. Since then he has worked on a broad range of topic in soft matter, including nonlinear dynamics, granular media, rheology, jamming and metamaterials, combining experiments, simulations and theory. The common thread in all this works is the fascination for the emergence of complex behaviour in seemingly simple systems. In 2008 he was appointed as professor in the ‘organization of disordered media’ in Leiden and in 2014 he became head of the newly established 'Designer Matter' department at AMOLF, Amsterdam. His main current fascination is to embed complex functionalities in architected materials.

Mats has been with Kockums since 1988. The last 15 years Mats has worked as a manager within material supply management, model-based systems engineering management and product information modeling process and methods. Since four years Mats has worked within integrated logistics support (ILS) with a special interest in how to develop and deliver the ship information deliveries (“the digital twin”) to the customers.

Maurice Preidel graduated in December 2015 with a master's degree in Information Technology in Mechanical Engineering. Already during his studies he gained practical experience through several years working student jobs in the automotive and aviation sector. Since January 2016, he has been conducting research in the field of applied information technology in the product development process at the Department of Industrial Information Technology. His main area of ​​research is the linking of semantic (domain knowledge, situational context) and statistical data (product usage data, measurement series). He uses technologies of the Semantic Web and Artificial Intelligence.

Nick’s career started as an Industrial Engineer for Philips in the United Kingdom. Having been instrumental in the transformation of Engineering and Manufacturing when the business divested from Philips, he joined IBM. There he became the lead consultant in Europe for Product Lifecycle Management in the hi-tech sector. Nick joined Deloitte UK to lead their Product Innovation and Lifecycle Management practice, where he shaped, sold & delivered technology-enabled business transformation engagements in the areas of innovation & PLM. He left Deloitte in 2007 to join Dyson and later Accenture. In 2014 he joined AB SKF Group as the Director of Product Lifecycle Management.

Oleg is an entrepreneur, consultant and blogger. He has been building software products for data management, engineering and manufacturing for the last 20 years which has allowed him to gather experience across a diversity of fields, industries, customers, technologies, organizations, managements and communications. Oleg is CEO and co-founder of OpenBOM (TM) developing product-centric business applications for manufacturing companies and supply chain. At Beyond PLM, he consults companies in engineering and manufacturing with a primarily focus in data and produce lifecycle management strategy.

Paul is VP of Research for PI, with responsibilities for the development of all product offerings at PI. Paul has many years of experience working with a range of manufacturing leaders across 3D CAD, PLM and strategic business process improvement disciplines. More recently he led PLM programmes in both the UK Defence and Machinery industries, with responsibilities for PLM scope, strategy definition and delivery.  Paul has successfully delivered enterprise-wide performance improvements through change programmes, process optimisation and building effective DevOps teams.

Peter Bilello, President of the strategic management consulting and research firm CIMdata—an internationally recognized authority on PLM—has more than 24 years of experience in the development of business-enabling information technology (IT) solutions for research, engineering, and manufacturing organizations worldwide.

In 2012, Raphaël Domjan completed the first ever world tour powered solar energy. In 2001 he founded Horus Networks, first solar web hosting company in the world. In 2004, he founded and became the expedition leader of an extraordinary adventure: PlanetSolar, the first round the world with a solar boat. In 2015, he sailed over 300 km with the sailor Anne Quemere in the Northwest passage with a solar kayak. He is the first to utilise polar navigation on solar energy. The adventure continues for Raphael as he embarks on another record-breaking journey - as the initiator and pilot of SolarStratos.

Since the beginning of 2018, Richard Habering has been the head of the young igus® business unit "smart plastics" in product development and sales concepts for cost-effective condition monitoring systems. Developing customer benefits through the use of IoT and Industry 4.0 and integrating with the customer infrastructure is one of the biggest challenges in this future business field. He has spent 11 years in product management for chainflex® special cables, 3 years of product development and sales of Triflex®R e-chain® systems on industrial robots as well as the launch of the igus® readychain® turnkey solution business form a good basis for the new business area

Sami has over 20 years of experience in global mining and metals business, and has held various positions from Engineering, Product Development through to Sales and Product Management. Currently he is in charge of Operations and Process Development, with the responsibility of ensuring all operations and business processes deliver targeted performance corporate-wide. Additionally, he is the owner of the R&D and PLM processes and related business concepts and systems.

Sebastian is currently leading Airbus’ efforts to operationalise the Digital Twin and harness its opportunities across the organisation’s value chain. He brings a wealth of experience into his function, having previously spent 7 year at Fraunhofer institute as a Research Engineer.

Stavros has 17+ years of experience and has led multiple projects in the areas of product innovation, R&D, quality management, cost optimization, supply chain strategy, planning and sourcing. Stavros is considered a thought leader in the product development domain with multiple publications and extensive industry experience in the Life Sciences, Consumer Goods, Industrial Products, and Energy sectors.

Susanne joined AGCO Corporation in 2011, initially as a project manager for Manufacturing Automation projects. In her current role as Director, Global Advanced Manufacturing Technology she represents the business with regards to the Enterprise PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) implementation at our global sites. This is an enabler for AGCO’s Design Anywhere Build Anywhere platform strategy, because it allows the global collaboration between the plants. Building upon the PLM backbone Susanne and her team are now also working on simulations to improve accuracy and efficiency of the assembly processes.

Tornjorn has been working at Kockums since 1988. Although he has a background in electronics he has spent most of his time within the area of IS/IT. His main focus within IS/IT has been on ERP/PML/MBD environments and Information Management in general. His interest lies in enabling efficient Information Management that supports the Design and Production processes.