Rethink: The Manufacturing Leadership Council Summit 2020

Hitachi was the strategic partner of this year’s virtual Rethink: The Manufacturing Leadership Council Summit. This National Association of Manufacturers event took place October 27 through the 29 with over 900 people in attendance. As the strategic partner of the event, Hitachi led a pre-event webinar, a Think Tank, an Executive Dialogue, two roundtable discussions, and a featured demo, while simultaneously conducting 1:1 networking sessions with event attendees over the course of the event.

During the Executive Dialogue: Orchestrating Human + Machines + Data: The Key to Digital Industrial Transformation, JR Automation Vice President of Digital Solutions, Mike Lashbrook and former Hitachi Vantara President of Digital Solutions, Brad Surak, showcased the power digital transformation has on the manufacturing industry. Lashbrook and Surak addressed the impact the covid-19 pandemic has had on forwarding digital manufacturing and inflecting to Manufacturing 4.0, the roadblocks that companies may face when adopting advanced technologies, and the strategies manufacturers should adopt now to be a leader in their industry.

In a roundtable discussion, Digital Solutions Architect at Hitachi Global Social Innovation Business, Udayan Joshi, led the conversation on “Dynamic and Flexible Manufacturing: Do Digital Technologies Enable or Inhibit flexibility in the manufacturing processes and capabilities?”. In a limited-capacity setting, this was an opportunity for attendees to understand and openly discuss the role robotics and industrial IoT technology plays in the manufacturing process as well as the flexibility technology-based optimization allows.

On the last day of the event, Sullair team members, Data Analytics Specialist, Raji Chandrasekaran, and Senior Director of Aftermarket and IoT Commercial Solutions, Luis Torres, led an intimate roundtable on “IoT to ERPs: Data Capturing, Saving and Leveraging.” Chandrasekaran and Torres covered how Sullair takes collected and analyzed data and cascades it from the C-suite to the production floor, all while translating the information to drive action that benefits the company. The discussion allowed for attendees to inquire how to best maximize and implement their own data capturing strategies and analyses into their businesses.

Hitachi then hosted a featured demo of its RFSS Robotic Sortation System. Marc Walters, Senior Project Engineer of JR Automation, presented how this technology can give companies back thousands of square feet of floor space with the compact, modular sorter that allows for 1,500 sorts per hour. The demo led to an open discussion of the fast-pace installation of the system and forward technology involved.

Hitachi is proud to have been a part of this innovative event and looks forward to working the National Association of Manufacturers in the future.

Learn more about how Hitachi can help your company drive digital transformation in manufacturing.