The Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association, MESA International, has announced keynote speakers for its Annual Plant-To-Enterprise Conference: Integration to Innovation, which will take place Sept. 16-18 at the Rosen Plaza hotel in Orlando, Fla. This year’s line-up counts five chief information officers (CIOs) from Fortune 500 companies among what is billed as a world-class group of keynote and general session presentations highlighting the importance seen for information technology (IT) in manufacturing.
“Establishing an enterprise-wide manufacturing IT strategy has become a top priority for many CIOs today. It’s being driven by the need to improve product innovation capabilities, and it’s being reflected in technology spending priorities” says Matt Bauer, MESA chairman. “We also see evidence of accelerating convergence between corporate IT and traditional manufacturing engineering departments. MESA International’s focus on plant-wide information technologies puts us at the forefront of the next wave of manufacturing innovation. This conference provides a unique forum and a wonderful opportunity for professionals from both walks of life to gain better perspective on the opportunities and challenges IT-enabled manufacturing represents to world class manufacturers.”
The CIOs of GE Fanuc, International Truck, Rockwell Automation, Sara Lee and Siemens will present and discuss how IT is enabling world-class innovation and competitive advantage in manufacturing today. Keynote Peter Fingar, internationally recognized author of “How to Execute on Innovation, The Real-Time Enterprise: Competing on Time” will illuminate the major economic shifts coming in the next decade, and what we can do to prepare our organizations to deal with the coming sea change.
MESA International keystone sponsors now include GE Fanuc, SAP, Siemens, Rockwell Automation, Wonderware, IBM, Microsoft and MPDV. A surge of interest in IT-enabled manufacturing is fueling new growth in Europe and the Middle East. Additional MESA chapters are also being developed to serve manufacturers in South Africa, Australia, and China. Expansion efforts this year will culminate with a European MESA P2E Conference in November 2007, in Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Conference and registration information for the September North American event is available at www.mesa.org/conference/2007/na.
MESA International
www.mesa.org.
