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Caterpillar CEO will be headline speaker at 2002 APICS conference to be held October 27 to 30 in Nashville

Manufacturing News, Source : The Manufacturer US
Published : 04 Sep 2002 11:50

Glen Barton, chairman and CEO of Caterpillar, Inc. will be one of four featured speakers at this year’s APICS conference, being held October 27 to 30 in Nashville.

Other keynote speakers include Dr. Steve Lundin, co-author of FISH! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results; Jim McCann, CEO of 1-800-Flowers.com; and William Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company magazine.

The conference will feature more than 120 educational sessions; an exposition made up of more than 95 vendors of software, systems, and services; a ceremony to announce the winners of APICS’s Corporate Awards of Excellence; and plant tours of OshKosh B-Gosh and Saturn facilities.

Attendees will have an opportunity to tour OshKosh B’Gosh’s distribution center to observe the company’s automated pick-to-light/pack-to-light operations and rotating carousel bin pick system. The center contains more than two miles of conveyor where products are picked and shipped using a wide variety of methods. The Saturn tour includes a tram ride through the vehicle and interior systems buildings of the Saturn manufacturing complex. Participants will receive details about the processes and unique features that take place in Saturn’s final assembly operations.

Educational session topics include forecasting, supplier collaboration, lean manufacturing strategies, customer relationship management, global business strategies, demand pipeline management, supplier relationship management, professional development, sales and operations planning, and inventory reduction.

Collaboration is a major theme of the conference and the subject of the Executive Edge sessions. “Collaborative commerce is a reality and is important for success in today’s economy,” said William Luttman, chairman of the APICS International Conference and Exposition Committee. “Few businesses can claim to have meaningful and complete integration within their organization or with their partners, customers, and suppliers. The message from the Executive Edge sessions is collaborate or risk failure.”

A session by Dave Robinson, supply management manager at Harley-Davidson, will reveal collaboration methods that resulted in 30% fulfillment increases and asset productivity gains of more than 20%.

Oracle’s vice president for supply chain management product marketing, Frank Prestipino, will discuss how supply chain mangement systems empower decisionmaking and strategic analysis.

David Landau, director of product management at Manhattan Associates, will present real-life examples of successful collaboration. “Becoming integrated in real time with all trading partners, customers, suppliers, and transportation providers to achieve efficiency will lead to global inventory visibility for optimum monitoring of the flow of inventory and associated data,” he said.

Three Corporate Awards of Excellence will be awarded at the show. The educational award recognizes an organization’s commitment to education investment and productivity improvements due to application of educational concepts. The innovation award is given for the development of a new technique or product that significantly advances the resource management industry. Finally, the technology partnership award recognized a partnership between a technical provider and a corporate customer that has significantly increased a company’s success.

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