Webcast

Innovation in Manufacturing: The Collaboration Imperative

Available on Wednesday, March 24, 2010 2:00 PMRegister for Webcast
Innovation has always been important and difficult, and, today, it is required for competitive differentiation more than ever before as the manufacturing playing field has become global in nature.

New competitive advantages are created by thinking anew about, and communicating the value of, product and service innovation in manufacturing more rapidly via new forms of collaboration.

Key points which will be discussed during the webcast:
  • A Mandate for Change - why understanding “innovation lifecycle” elements at both strategic and tactical levels will spell the difference between success and failure with innovation.
  • Key Innovation Dimensions - introduction of the 5-element innovation framework devised by Cisco and explain why a structured approach to thinking about innovation is important to success
  • Foundation Elements - how the 5 innovation dimensions must be supported by the right kind of corporate organizational structure, governance, culture and underlying technology enablement.


Moderator

  • David R. Brousell

    Editor-in-Chief, Managing Automation

    David R. Brousell has been Editor-in-Chief of Managing Automation since 1998. Brousell started his career in technology journalism in 1978 at Electronic News. In 1985, he joined Datamation Magazine, and was named Editor-in-Chief in 1991. Brousell has covered numerous industry developments, technology shifts and major product introductions, including the mainframe era and the development of relational databases; the rise of the minicomputer; the advent of personal computing, client-server computing and the evolution of enterprise applications, and the dawn of the Internet and the worldwide web. Along the way, he has interviewed such notables as ENIAC inventor J. Presper Eckert, IBM's Thomas J. Watson Jr., Microsoft's Bill Gates, Oracle's Larry Ellison, Cincom's Tom Nies, Lotus's Mitchell Kapor, Netscape's James Barksdale, and Intel's Andrew Grove. Brousell has received numerous journalism awards, including two consecutive Jesse H. Neal Editorial Achievement Awards, the highest award for business journalism in the U.S. Under his leadership at MA, the magazine has been cited 9 times for editorial achievement.

Panelists

  • Wes Olson

    Managing Director, United State and Canada, Manufacturing Verticals Sales, Cisco Systems, Inc.

    Wes Olson brings more than 25 years of manufacturing, engineering, International General Management and Management Consulting experience as Cisco’s Managing Director – US-C Manufacturing Vertical Sales. In this role, Mr. Olson is responsible to drive Solution sales for Cisco’s business with manufacturing companies across the United States and Canada. Integral to Cisco’s strategy for manufacturing customers is the integration of solutions that produce real-time visibility and context-rich collaboration for Continuous Innovation, Supply Chain Agility, Operational Excellence and Customer Intimacy across the manufacturing value chain.

    Prior to joining Cisco, Mr. Olson worked at the Tompkins PLC Company, contributing to both top-line growth and bottom-line profitability as he advanced through several business units with increasing leadership and General Management responsibilities. Mr. Olson spent 4 years in India creating a new division for hydraulic assemblies in the fast moving heavy equipment industry in the late 90’s. Mr. Olson is one of the original patent holders for rubber tracks in the agricultural industry and he is a Six Sigma Blackbelt. His experience includes product & equipment design, plant design and construction, Operations Management, Quality Assurance, and General Management. Mr. Olson has been with Cisco for 10 years and worked in Singapore as a Management Consultant to the SE Asian Manufacturing arena for Cisco’s IBSG Consulting team.

    Mr. Olson earned a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and holds a Master’s in International Management from Thunderbird University.

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