2019 North American Manufacturing Excellence Summit (NAMES)

The North American Manufacturing Excellence Summit, North America’s premier manufacturing event, was held on April 16-17, 2019 at the Westin Chicago North Store hotel in Chicago. The summit brings together the “who’s who” of manufacturing executives, thought leaders, cutting-edge technology providers, and media partners. This year’s topics included: Building Competitive Advantage, Lean, OpEX, and CI programs, Leadership as the Engine of Change, Technology as the Difference Maker, Supply Chain Strategies, and Workforce Development.

In attendance were over 280 event delegates from more than 200 manufacturing companies representing various industries including Hitachi, 3M, Abbott, Adidas, ADM, Amazon, Boeing, Caterpillar, Dell Technologies, Essentra, General Motors, Georgia Pacific, Harley-Davidson Motor Company, John Deere, Johnson & Johnson, Lego, Mary Kay, Nestle, Nexteer Automotive, Nissan Motor Corporation, PepsiCo Beverages, Shutterfly, Textron Specialized Vehicles, Toyota, Tyson Foods, Wal-Mart, and Yamaha, to name a few.

Hitachi was a Platinum Sponsor at NAMES which offered us the opportunity to host a workshop titled “Six Steps to Improve the Journey to Operational Excellence in Smart Manufacturing,” led by Stephen Engel, Senior Vice President, Solutions Business Lead, Hitachi Consulting and Marcie Backer, SME Discrete Manufacturing, Operations & Process, Hitachi Global Social Innovation Business. We also had a booth presence at the event allowing us to explain Hitachi Smart Manufacturing and Industrial IoT Solutions, as well as network with event attendees.

The workshop session “Six Steps to Improve the Journey to Operational Excellence in Smart Manufacturing” covered the following topics:

• Offering insights from one of the world’s largest IoT patent holders with 100+ years of experience owning, operating, servicing, and supplying companies in the operational and information technology sectors
• Taking action to reduce costs, increase agility, and reduce bottlenecks, improve utilization of factory assets and resources, increase production speed and quality, and meet compliance and sustainability goals
• Learning to draw a more detailed digital manufacturing road map and avoid the early pitfalls that make it difficult for so many companies to thrive in the digital world of smart manufacturing
• Leveraging existing data to improve KPIs, aggregate and analyze data to reduce costs, increase asset utilization (equipment, people, and space), and improve production speed and quality

Stephen Engel Hitachi Consulting and Marcie Backer, Hitachi Global Social Innovation Business presenting the workshop titled, “Six Steps to Improve the Journey to Operational Excellence In Smart Manufacturing.”