Past Speakers (2019)

Lanny joined the company in 2014 bringing more than 30 years of experience in operations management in the chemical industry in the US. A US national, he studied Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington, USA and has worked at firms including Rohm and Haas, Celanese and Arkema.

Helen works in BASF’s global logistics & supply chain centre of expertise and with her team she takes care of process and asset improvements and innovations in bulk storage and transportation. Recent focus and activities include the new BASF class tank containers (B-TC), introduction of automated guided vehicles (AGV) for site transportation and automated loading stations

Lars has more than 28 years of working experience within the plastics industry, in the areas of sales, marketing, M&A and SCM. After 4 years in Singapore he returned to Germany with deep understanding of Asian culture and supply chain issues in Asia, EMEA and the USA. With these unique experiences he has been chosen to orchestrate the Supply Chain challenges we are facing in a more dynamic and rapidly changing global market environment.

Heinz Lux is Senior Digital Strategist at Evonik Digital GmbH, the digital subsidiary of Evonik Industries AG, which sees itself as the "Digital Innovation Factory" of Evonik. In his almost 32 years at Evonik Industries, he held various roles from sales to marketing and product management to strategic planning, controlling and business development. Heinz’s background is business administration and he holds the Executive MBA from Pace University in New York City. In the US, he was a Business Director, where he made a significant turnaround in the product lines profitability and performance. As Head of Pricing at Evonik's M&S Excellence Initiative, he introduced value pricing for the global group. In addition, he was actively involved in various merger and acquisition projects, including managing director of a unit for sale in Maastricht (NL). From 2015 to 2017, he led Evonik's global business process organization and laid the foundation for Evonik's digitization initiatives, which it is now continuing to advance in terms of content.

Holger drives the digital transformation of business across all customer-facing functions including technical & product service, R&D innovation, customer interaction and supply chain. In logistics, digitalisation is fostered in cooperation with internal & external partners as well as start-ups. Focus is set particularly on smart load carriers such as pallets. First successful pilots have proven gains in efficiency, transparency and sustainability. Scaling is ongoing, as broader use across the company and industry will enable another leap in cost reduction and quality of the supply chain.

Jens-Mario has been developing and implementing a blockchain solution within logistics to provide more transparency on product shipments. Defining a strong use case and running a proper proof of concept with no technology experience present in the organisation has been a challenge, as well as the partner selection to develop and implement the solution. Through strong commitment, an open mind-set, experimental attitude as well as a clear definition of targets, he was able to deliver the solution. 

Fabian is an experienced Supply Chain Leader with a background in various industries. In his past roles he developed and implemented global Plan-to-make and Order-to-cash processes. This was coupled with an organisational development of new roles and hierarchical structures. Furthermore he led an European network optimisation for warehouses. Currently he is working on improvement of physical logistical infrastructure and to establish an "ERP-like" process culture - consistent and consequent use of a system. His most challenging part is and will be to educate all working levels, to create awareness in the top management and to integrate a heterogeneous digital landscape. He sees the digital transformation as a logical next step which needs to be implemented evolutionary.

Wolfgang is leading the global supply chain organisation of Perstorp which includes Planning, Logistics, Procurement and Customer Service. In that function he reports directly to the CEO. His greatest successes recently include the transformation towards Integrated Business Planning and digitalisation of the End-To-End Supply Chain.

Jean-Marc VIALLATTE was appointed Arkema Supply Chain Corporate Vice President on January 2018. Jean-Marc brings 25 years’ experience in operations and supply chain in various industries such as FMCG, building industries and adhesives. In the past years, Jean-Marc has been focusing on building efficient, customer centric and digital supply chains. At Arkema, Jean-Marc is creating a global supply chain, positioned as a key strategic function. He leads a community of supply chain professionals to provide world class service to customers through harmonized and optimized processes, to support Arkema growth and enable digital transformation.

Maarten Cornelissen is currently global Supply Chain leader at Teijin Aramid, owner of McLogVision and Advisor to the Board for Royal Ahrend Group, having previously been their Chief Supply Chain Officer. Having spent over 20 years in senior European Supply Chain management positions, amongst others as VP Service for LG Electronics and Whirlpool, Maarten’s aim is to lead and coach management teams on supply chain transformation to become truly customer led, integral managed, state-of-the-art supply chain organizations, applying latest technology. Maarten has a wealth of change management experience leading Supply Chain transformation efforts for companies like Whirlpool, Royal Ahrend and most recent Teijin Aramid. 

Jan is globally responsible for the Supply Chain workstream of BASF 4.0; a senior project initiator to drive the digitisation of BASF. In his role Jan oversees the key projects defined by BASF to drive their digital transformation. The main challenge is to bring proven solutions to scale throughout the global organisation. Change management and stakeholder engagement are therefore a key focus of his role.

Dr. Sibylle Mutschler is leading Clariant’s digitalisation program. She is working on sales growth via new business models developed jointly with multiple teams and start-up crews, efficiency realisation and speed gains for Clariant’s operations via elevating Clariant’s existing production system to a digital level. By bringing data science as a strategic lever to a specialty chemicals company, and laying the right foundations from a legal, tax and cyber security perspective, she is bringing digital skills and different ways of thinking to Clariant.

Mikko is an experienced change leader having background in various Supply Chain disciplines and also in sales and general management. In earlier roles he has been setting up a regional business service center and improving business processes in the business unit and SCM interphases. Currently he is implementing a global 4PL service model for Road transportation with integrated TMS platform. Big items in the transformation are how to gain more real time visibility and digitalize info flow related to transportation.

Jan is the Head of Global Logistics for Borealis. His main responsibilities include purchasing of all logistics activities, globally, as well as project responsibilities for all logistics project in relation to M & A and green field operation. Most recently, Jan considers his biggest success to be moving Logistics from a cost center approach to a value-added approach. Jan considers his greatest challenges to date to be attracting new, young talent and making supply chain an attractive field to work in.

For the past year Leopold Klaus Hammer has been focused on Supply Chain re-design to improve customer experience and cost efficiency of the entire supply chain. Once potential areas of optimization have been found, the next step of Klaus is the development of detail design and its implementation. During this project change management is considered as the biggest challenge.

During the last 26 years Julio has had direct operational responsibilities on every value chain area including; Demand and Supply Planning, Procurement, Production Scheduling, Own Operations, 3rd Party Manufacturing, Logistics and Customer Service. His current focus is to re-design and merge East & West into a newly created European Supply Chain with new Systems, Organisation and Governance Model Costs. 

Stephanie has been developing and implementing Customer Service Excellence strategy as part of an organisational and culture change management program in Europe.  While establishing a new culture, the challenge has been to re-invent the value of the organisation with process optimisation and digitalisation which significantly impacts the daily life of an agent.  The main achievements have been rooted in the performance of the team, the loyalty and mind set of a larger organisation and the improvement in the customer journey.  Stephanie’s next focus will be on digital integration and ensuring those programs exceed customer expectations in terms of service. 

Arno Dalhuisen is Global Head of SC Excellence within DSM Nutrional Products, a world leading supplier of vitamins, carotenoids and other nutritional solutions within Animal Nutrition & Health, Human Nutrition & Health and Personal Care & Aroma Ingredients. For years Arno is focussed on unleashing the full potential of all to contribute and team up from day-2-day continuous improvements towards strategic value chain improvement projects. In doing so Arno and his team facilitate, coach and train teams from regional to global areas and from shopfloor to leadership level to build continous improvement capability and applying digitization techniques within.

Alexis is driving the Supply Chain Excellence projects within a global environment at 2 levels: customer service and logistics, as well as digital. Next to traditional OTC improvement initiatives, Alexis is supporting the roll-out of the NPS methodology throughout the whole group. In the digital area, Alexis has been focusing in the last few months in developing "Tracking & Tracing" solutions at various levels: origin tracing, maritime tracking, road tracking, .... At the same time, he is starting the deployment of a "Process Mining" solution using BigData/AI to drive process excellence within Customer Service and Logistics processes. 

Christian has spent more than 20 years in SC both in operations and corporate centers activities covering all spectrum of SC domains. In the last four years his focus was on the S&OP process maturity improvement including the implementation of a single tool for the group. Now that this is project is well in place, the priorities have moved towards the introduction of more advanced tools with as ultimate goal of fully integrated business planning. 

Pablo Nosti has more than 20 years experience in leading multinational teams in manufacturing, procurement, shared services and supply chain. In his current role – Logistics Manager, he is responsible for Logistics Procurement, Leveraged Logistics Operations and Customs & Trade Compliance across Europe Middle East and Africa. The mission of the Logistics organization in DuPont is to create a sustainable, competitive advantage across all Business Units and reduce the environmental footprint within its supply chains. In addition, during the last 2 years DuPont is undergoing a deep transformation with the merge of equals with Dow completed in September 2017, and the intended split into three strong independent companies that will become global leaders in Agriculture, Materials Science and Specialty Products.

Peter is responsible for executing the supply chain processes in the DuPont Nutrition & Health business in EMEA. The biggest challenge for his team is to align supply chain capabilities with the ever-changing market requirements – reliability, cost, working capital needs, responsiveness to orders and adaptability to changes are constantly interacting elements that require a collaborative culture with customers, suppliers and service providers.

Yasser Bin Sabir is currently the Head of Integrated Business Planning (IBP) working for ARLANXEO. After spending the first 2 years of his career in the corporate management cadre of Reliance Industries, he was picked by Bayer to lead its regional sales team for Middle-east and Africa. He moved on to progressively higher and global responsibilities in Marketing, Product Management, Strategy and S&OP/IBP in Lanxess/Arlanxeo. He has been a trend setter and thought leader in the area of S&OP and Business Planning and has led global implementations of S&OP in several Business Units of Lanxess/Arlanxeo. He has a proven track record in achieving business transformation and in implementing processes and structures that have become benchmarks for the company.asser Bin Sabir is currently the Head of Integrated Business Planning (IBP) working for ARLANXEO. After spending the first 2 years of his career in the corporate management cadre of Reliance Industries, he was picked by Bayer to lead its regional sales team for Middle-east and Africa. He moved on to progressively higher and global responsibilities in Marketing, Product Management, Strategy and S&OP/IBP in Lanxess/Arlanxeo. He has been a trend setter and thought leader in the area of S&OP and Business Planning and has led global implementations of S&OP in several Business Units of Lanxess/Arlanxeo. He has a proven track record in achieving business transformation and in implementing processes and structures that have become benchmarks for the company.

Ralf’s role as Global Process Owner includes the responsibility for process design, implementation and compliance with standards for the regions EMEA / LATAM, APAC and NAFTA. Currently delegated to Hong Kong, he leads a project to increase efficiency and best practice sharing across Supply Chain Centres in the APAC countries.

Christian is responsible for a continuous optimisation of energy usage between production and distribution. He leads the activities of AIR LIQUIDE Germany for simultaneous supply chain optimisation, coordinating production and distribution requirements between different business units. He has a broad experience in various supply chain related IT projects, such as ERP, mobile solutions, transport management systems, and sourcing optimisation.

Bharath partners with senior supply chain and manufacturing executives across Merck KGaA in identifying opportunities to drive best in class performance through advanced analytics, data mining, rich visualisations and new technologies. He is currently responsible for the digital transformation of the global manufacturing and supply chain function of the Biopharma business of Merck KGaA and particularly focused on autonomous operations

Thomas Bronnert, Vice President Corporate Logistics at WACKER, drives the global roll out of standards as a prerequisite to improve the global consistency of logistics processes, to increase the visibility of transport chains and to enhance the view on the most relevant logistics performance parameters within the WACKER Group. The new process standards will improve WACKER's connectivity to logistics service providers and enable a common understanding of timely information flows, together with the integration of real time digital tracking tools and an event management system. Thorough change management, but also the consideration of local and regional specifics are the key milestones for a successful implementation on a global level.

Steven joined SABIC as Global SHEQ Manager in 2011, globalizing the supply chain safety programs including responsible care and sustainability. Complementing his operational skills are project management skills – six sigma, transport safety and site logistics safety auditing which includes extensive experience as subject matter expert in inter-industry workgroups setting standards sharing best practices and defining most-effective-technologies, all in the specialism of transport safety, risk assessment and supply chain sustainability.

Dr. Kache is responsible for the development of end-to-end Supply Chain strategies at BASF, supply chain innovation and trends monitoring, and the management of relationships with external research bodies such as the MIT. Recently has has been working on global supply chain strategies and smart supply chain solutions.

Guillermo is Owner and CEO of Extheria, a company that creates full supply chain transparency and remote process management through digital object identity and senses combining leading edge sensors, energy efficient connectivity and intelligent clouds. Guillermo has been more than 25 year experience in the chemical industry having been responsible for setting business processes and organizations in Order to cash and leading global logistics, supply chain, eBusiness and procurement departments in Clariant International. His biggest success in the past 6 Month is the development of new Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and applications that allow an economic use of IoT in several fields like transparency, security, tracking, tracing and damage and counterfeit prevention. These innovative activities are supported by several EU and German founded organizations, as well as venture capital.

Peter Devos is an independent Supply Chain Practitioner and is Managing Director at ECTA, the European Chemical Transport and Logistics Association. Peter coordinates logistics transformation projects and envisions to further transform & digitalize the Chemical logistics processes across multiple enterprises. Together with all stakeholders including other European Associations, he helps the Chemical Logistics Community implementing the logistics 4.0 technologies to achieve their targets and innovative business models.

In the recent years Michael worked on the carve-out of the LANXESS polymer business units and the start up of the new JV ARLANXEO between LANXESS and Saudi Aramaco. He drove the company’s supply chain harmonization and standardization to achieve one way of working and establishing a new  organizational set up that is process driven and will meet the company’s future needs. As of 2019 ARLANXEO will be a fully owned subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, subject to the receipt of all regulatory approvals. 

After Millipore was acquired by Merck Company in 2010, Fabrice was responsible for harmonisation and development of end-to-end supply chain processes for the new born Merck Millipore Division. He is now Head of End-to-End Order to Deliver processes.

Stijn Sweere is Director Global Supply Chain for IFF’s Fragrance business. He focused last years on building and executing a Global governance model for planning and logistics. One of the most recent key projects took the governance structure a step further.  The raw material planning function was centralized in the Netherlands, which marked the first global centralization of a supply chain function at the operational level. It allowed the business to benefit from a centralized team of experts unlocking a new level of improvement opportunities in the global supply chain.

Shailesh Mishra, Global Portfolio Manager, Supply Chain and Commercial for LyondellBasell. He led the Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) business transformations initiative to bring the Polymers business segment to higher maturity level. It allowed this business to make a step change in terms of S&OP to establish a dedicated organization, an end to end view of the whole process along with setting right accountability. 

Graham has more than 30 years’ experience in the Chemical Industry and represents Air Products at the European Industrial Gases Association focussing on driver safety. Graham has led many improvement initiatives on efficiency and safety, most recently focusing on systems and tools that are used by the drivers and influence their behaviour. 

Philipp has more than 7 years of experience in the chemical distribution industry. In leading several major EMEA wide supply chain projects he generated a broad market know. Since 2016 he is a Pioneer of Brenntag’s digital transformation @ DigiB. As Digital Supply Chain Manager he is responsible for driving the digital supply chain strategy for Brenntag EMEA.

Joan’s principal role is to lead the Tactical S&OP Meeting for pigment preparation materials, control inventory and review the production plan globally. The last years he has been involved in a Global project to run the implementation of APO (Advanced Planning Optimiser) as Global Key user for Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling. In this Project we are in another phase to check what some points in the process need improvement and with a sustainable approach we are moving forward to achieve our target to have a system tool to rely on. 

Frank is the Technical General Manager at PCI Augsburg GmbH (an affiliate of BASF SE) where he is responsible for about 550 employees across R&D, Planning, Logistic, Production, Engineering & Maintenance, EHSQ and Site Management functions in 4 plants, that serve 9 core countries and 3 business lines. Prior to this, Frank held various roles in BASF and Degussa Construction Chemicals within operations and supply chain management. Currently Frank is working on implementation of robotics for manual OTC processes, where the most challenging part is to bridge the personal customer-contact and automated mass transactions. He sees “finding the right balance of human & technology solutions” as a next opportunity to drive the Order-to-Cash (OTC) process to Process-Excellence and Business-Success.

Francois is in charge of Cabot’s Transportation & Logistics Strategy and Purchasing activities. His recent projects have been focused on leading the carrier performance management, global warehouse strategy and execution for EMEA as well as managing regional transportation managers, executing global capital projects and supporting feedstock and raw material teams.

Lennart is responsible for the design and implementation of FTA’s in the global ERP of the Dow Chemical Company, as well as the functionality around Duty calculations and accruals. Previously he was responsible for the transport of goods in containers and airfreight for all exports out of an imports into Europe for Dow. In that capacity he has assisted in implementing SC visibility through IoT-application. Next to that, he has a keen interest in new techniques that Dow can apply in the IoT-space and engaged on concept proofing of those. In earlier roles he was more involved in the process side, being engaged in the integration-project of the Rohm&Haas Company and serving in several roles as production engineer. Lennart holds a Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering. 

Emilie has a broad experience in customer service and order fulfilment including transport management. Currently she is the Customer Care Manager involved in strategic projects to make sure that DSM act upon given feedback received by customers based on complaints and any other communication in order to fulfil the customers’ expectations and even go beyond. 

Marc Van der Veen is global Associate Director for Supply Chain Innovation in Dow Dupont since January 2018. Prior to that, Marc was Supply Chain Improvement Leader for the Consumer Solutions division in Dow where his specific area of expertise has been to link performance and productivity improvements in Supply Chain to improved Customer Experience.

With a background in process optimisation and leading the largest customer service team in the organisation for several years, Stephanie is now focusing on optimising customer experience with enhanced digital solutions.

With a background in engineering and business development, Elisabeth has a career focus on change management, strategic development and impactful implementation. She is the Vice President Germany for Cordstrap, the global leader in cargo protection solutions to the chemical industry.

Elisabeth’s cargo protection team works in partnership with businesses throughout the chemical supply chain, providing data-driven visibility to supply chain problems around product damage, loading efficiency, safety and regulatory compliance. They deliver expert advice, compliant securing solutions and class-leading support and training to ensure smooth implementation and change management at customers’ sites around the world.

Ron Heijman currently is the Sales Director EMEA for the Transporeon Group and an experienced sales director, program - and country manager in the logistics, finance and telecom industry. Ron has a strong ability in purchase to pay, order to cash, supply chain finance, B2B integration, sales management, mobile network infrastructure, SaaS networking environment and (e) logistics. He enabled several companies in getting a stable multi million Euro revenue stream in the Benelux and Europe

Mike Skinner is Senior Vice President at CLX Logistics. He is responsible for strategic development, marketing and deployment of CLX Logistics technology-based solutions and services. Through nearly 20 years at CLX and working integrally with many dozens of companies around the world, Mr. Skinner has played a major role in bringing global and domestic transportation management solutions to the chemical industry.  

Tony Bennett (30) joined CLX in June 2018 as Engagement Director, but he is not a new face. As he worked for CLX already for 3,5 years in the past as a Sales & Account Manager. As Engagement Director Tony is responsible for the Benchmarking team, Customer relations and Product development.With his logistics-oriented work experience, his fluency in English, Dutch and German and his desire to help companies understand data through visualization make him the right person for the job. Born in 1988 in the UK, Tony Bennett relocated to Eindhoven in the Netherlands when he was ten years old. He attended school in Eindhoven before continuing on to get a bachelor’s degree and work in a diverse number of roles. He gained his first work experience in the marketing department of the Dutch-French airline Air France/KLM. After working at CLX he got some additional international experience at DAKOSY in Hamburg where he was responsible for the BeNeLux operations. 

Matthias leads a cross functional team consists of Business Development, Product Management, Sales and Engineering, which is responsible for development and introduction of driver assistance solutions into industrial truck market. Main challenge is to identify the use cases and to derive product solutions with a high customer benefit for all stakeholders; therefore, customer development and value proposition design is a key focus of his role.

As the General Manager of the Orbit Logistics Group, Silvio is responsible for the ongoing successful international business development. As part of this Silvio is also one of the leading system architects of Orbit in all Supply Chain Automation aspects. In this role he introduced in the past Cloud Technologies and recently Blockchain and Smart Contracts as some of the most promising technologies for the Supply Chain ecosystem. He studied Electronics and Micro Device Technology at the Technical University of Dresden and the Humboldt University of Berlin and graduated with a Master Degree in Engineering. He holds a PhD in Engineering of the RWTH Aachen with the Thesis:  Migration Strategies of Distributed Control Systems.

Dr. McCallum is a member of SAP’s Chemical Industry Business Unit. She has been with SAP for 16 years, working in the areas of logistics and chemical best practices. Prior to working at SAP, Dr. McCallum worked for a number of different software companies, including an SAP partner specializing in business process modeling and the intellectual property and science business of Thomson Reuters.

Ken joined BDP International in 1980, and throughout his 33-year career, he has held a variety of increasingly responsible positions in Operations, Sales and Senior Corporate Staff. His vast experience in Sales covers process analysis, information integration, supply chain management initiatives, international logistics, and order execution. In 2001, he was one of the architects of BDP's Lead Logistics Provider model and was instrumental in landing some of BDP’s largest accounts.  As the Senior VP of Global Sales and Solutions Development, Ken collaborates with the global sales team to help reduce the sales cycle, and works to build strategic alliances with upstream and downstream supply chain partners.
He is also a member of the Council of Supply Chain Management, and is listed in the Who’s Who of International Logistics Professionals.

Frank is a Partner in the Advisory Services service line. He is leading the Chemical industry sector. As a former leader of Strategy & Operations in GSA Frank has over 20 years of extensive expertise in Supply Chain Process Modeling & Design, Organizational Change Management, Business Improvement Initiatives and Transformational Excellence.Frank was founder and CEO of J&M Management Consulting AG a Hidden Champion in Supply Chain and Value Chain consulting in Europe.

Paul is the global blockchain innovation leader for EY. In this role, he is responsible for building our global blockchain business, from R&D to product development to driving engagement sales. Prior to joining EY, Brody led IBM's global electronics industry business unit, working on technology strategy, mobile and Internet of Things, including the strategic alliance between IBM & Apple. Paul holds Bachelor Degree in Economics at Princeton University.

Andrew spent his first 11 years in industry in Supply Chain Management roles including Strategy, Planning, Manufacturing and Logistics. He complemented this initial industry experience with an MSc in Supply Chain Management at Cranfield University. Following this course, Andrew has spent the last 19 years in Supply Chain and Operations consulting with PW, PwC, IBM and EY. He has worked across multiple industries including FMCG, Pharmaceuticals, Industrial Products, Chemicals, Telecommunications, High Tech, Utilities, Automotive and Private Equity.

Wouter is a Partner in the Advisory Service Line. He is an expert in the area of Smart Automation West Europe organization and has been hands on in many projects in the area of digitization, artificial intelligence and robotics automation. In his 25 year career as consultant Wouter has focused on global business services for large scale multinationals, combining process improvements, organizational change and automation, ranging from ERP to digital/robotics. Wouter has delivered these projects from strategy & ideation to implementation and post implementation service for over 20 Fortune 500 companies in projects in more than 42 countries, for Chemical, Life Sciences and Consumer Products companies.

Frederick Ronse studied in Belgium, France, Spain and Italy, Frederick started his career in The Netherlands, working for a large German corporation in the waste sector. By coincidence Frederick learned that the ‘rail & intermodal freight’-sector was still being operated relying very heavily on manual efforts leaving a big opportunity for improvement. After gaining corporate knowledge, Frederick established Ovinto in 2010 with a mission to make optimise the complete supply chain regarding  rail & intermodal cargo. In the last 9 years Frederick has grown the company from a small startup focusing on the monitoring of extremely hazardous goods towards a reference player providing a technology platform to optimize rail & intermodal freight towards large chemical industries such as INEOS, Evonik, Sabic, LyondellBasell, Nouryon…and working together with partners such as SAP, Deloitte and the European Space Agency.

Graduated cum-laude in Econometrics and Operations Research at Tilburg University, where he also obtained a PhD in Quantitative Logistics. In his time as academic researcher, he focused on the application of quantitative models in supply chain design and planning. His work resulted in several publications in leading scientific journals. Before joining EyeOn, Ieke worked for TNT Express and Philips in various supply chain improvement roles. He specialized in Lean Six Sigma first as Black Belt and later as Master Black Belt responsible for major improvements program. Since his employment at EyeOn he has worked for a wide array of companies in the FMCG, High Tech and Process industry. He is well experienced in improving demand planning & forecasting processes and implementing Sales & Operations Planning. Together with Stijn Rutjes, he is leading the ‘Process Industry Business Team’ that is serving customers in the chemical-, feed-, food ingredients- and packaging industry.

Simon is Director of Customer Solutions at Elemica and leads a team of highly skilled Solution Architects in EMEA. Focused on the process industry, Simon and his team work on supply chain improvement projects helping customers with their digitization strategy. Simon Hardy studied Chemical Engineering at University College London and has been working in the Chemical Industry for 25 years. For the past 18 it has been in eBusiness and in Digital Transformation. He took the learnings from his 14 years at Air Products and Chemicals Inc and applied it to the rest of the industry when he joined Elemica in 2006. In his opinion, there is no excuse for not digitizing everything where there is obvious value and the returns outweigh the costs. 

Studied Industrial Engineering and Management Science at Eindhoven University of Technology, in the field of Logistic Control Systems. Stijn has broad experience in designing, improving and implementing innovative supply chain planning and control processes at various companies operating in the food, high-tech and process industry. Together with Ieke le Blanc, he is leading the ‘Process Industry Business Team’ that is serving customers in the chemical-, feed-, food ingredients- and packaging industry. Before Stijn joined EyeOn, he worked 7 years for DSM Coating Resins. Within DSM he has been responsible for the implementation of demand planning within the various sales departments, has been European logistics managers and was responsible for the Sales & Operations Planning process for one of the market segments.

David heads up Global Marketing at Elemica, The Digital Supply Network for the Process Industry. He has been implementing, marketing, and product managing leading enterprise applications for over 30 years including ERP, SCM, TMS, and WMS solutions and lived the word of customer facing solutions and customer experience for the past few years. David has held leadership positions at Phillips, KPMG, CA, AMR Research, Aptean and Infor. Additionally, he has started, built, and sold his own e-commerce and supply chain software company during the dot-com days and had his own corporate development consulting company to the software industry for over 10 years.

Pierre Khoury is CEO and co-founder of Shippeo, overseeing all Finance, R&D, and partnerships at. Previous to founding Shippeo, he co-founded Vermeer Capital, an investment fund that manages more than €80 million, where he gained extensive knowledge on the transportation industry and supply chains. This is when it became evident to him that companies who have predictive visibility into their supply chain operations can quickly anticipate problems and mitigate their impact, which results in increased customer satisfaction and significant cost savings. This is specially true for the chemical industry, where supply chains needs to be extremely agile and responsive. Pierre holds an engineering degree from ESIEA, and an MBA from HEC-Entrepreneurs. 

Steven Glinert is CEO of Kinta Artificial Intelligence. He has a masters from Stanford and has worked in quantitative trading and in software development at several startups. He grew up in New York. 

Jay Bhatia founded Agilis Chemicals in January 2017, a commerce platform that connects chemical buyers, producers, and distributors through an online marketing and transaction portal, after an illustrious career with BASF and Shell. He is passionate about using technology to solve industry’s most persistent challenges: lack of transparency and needless complexity resulting from highly fragmented supply chains. Leveraging his 20 years of experience in the global chemical industry, he leads a cross-functional team to build and launch a commerce platform purpose-built for the chemical industry.

 

Marc Schmitt is CEO and co-founder of Evertracker – A Hamburg, Germany based tech company combining IoT and Artificial Intelligence. Evertracker provides full transparency of supply chains, predictive analytics and process automation. The software constantly analysis and learns logistics in real-time to increase efficiency along the value chain. Optimize the flow of goods, manage movable assets and predict events within supply chains.  Marc is an EMBA degree holder (ESCP Europe) and an awarded designer. Before starting a technology company he worked for more than 10 years as strategy, design and marketing consultant for German corporations. He is a frequent speaker at a variety of events and conferences as well as a regular author sharing his vision and expertise on innovating postal and logistical services through smart solutions. Marc is passionate about IoT and Artificial Intelligence and believes in the simplicity of life. Today, he designs algorithms to solve logistics problems.

The Hurt Locker's real-life star, Major Chris Hunter QGM had 'the world's most dangerous job, in the world's most dangerous place'. As the British Army's most experienced counter-terrorist bomb disposal specialist in Iraq, he risked his life on a daily basis. So effective was he at defusing the crude, unstable but deadly devices, that terrorists on both sides of the conflict, Sunnis and Shi'ites, put a price on Chris' head. Quite apart from the danger of defusing the bombs, just getting to them was a risk, as Chris was a prime target for snipers. Chris joined the British Army as part of the Royal Logistic Corps (RLC) at sixteen, where he encountered the perceived stigma and undervaluation of the logistics function. During his career he deployed to a number of operational theatres, including The Balkans, Northern Ireland, Colombia, Afghanistan and Iraq, and for his actions during his Iraq tour, he was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal. Throughout his dangerous and dramatic military career, Chris has encountered situations where a highly valued and effective logistical operation could have saved him from extreme personal danger and even turned around the entire execution and perhaps the final result of some of history’s most well-known military operations. Chris rounded off his military career as a senior intelligence analyst at the Ministry of Defence. At the time of the London suicide bombings, he was seconded to COBRA, the Cabinet Office's emergency response committee. Chris illustrates a gruelling journey of bravery, strength, leadership and skill where every decision made during his time in Iraq could have been his last.

Richard is VP Solution Consulting at Infor-GT Nexus, passionate about helping organizations with their Global Trade and Logistics challenges. Over the last 20 years Richard has worked with leading global organization in both the manufacturing and retail industries with cloud based digital transformations.

Adam Compain is the CEO of ClearMetal, whom founded the company after spending time at OOCL, under the tutelage of their executive team in Hong Kong. Adam has appeared on Bloomberg TV, Gartner, and the cover of American Shipper for his company’s innovation in supply chain. Prior to ClearMetal, Adam spent five years at Google launching the company’s latest GeoCommerce technology and for 18 years, he has been the Executive Director of the nonprofit he founded to export charitable goods from North America. Adam holds five technology patents, two degrees from University of Michigan, and an MBA from Stanford University.

Ferry de Bruin is Solution Director at Infor with more the 30 years of experience in Sales & Operations Planning, Demand Forecasting , Supply Planning and Optimization as well as detailed Scheduling for Semi Process Industries.

Carolyn is responsible for the shipper segment at Alpega – bringing together strategy, marketing and product development to offer the best possible solution to help manufacturers, distributors, and third party logistics providers synchronize their supply chains. She brings over ten years of logistics experience, including new product development and go-to-market strategies for freight, parcel and warehousing at a Fortune 100 3PL. She holds an International MBA from RSM at Rotterdam University.

Mat helps companies to accelerate their journey to gaining maximum value from LLamasoft’s digital supply chain design and decisioning technology, holistically considering the People, Process, Technology and Strategy alignment required to ensure that their journey is a success. Mat has over 20 years of senior supply chain experience in industries ranging from construction to grocery, leading supply chain development, strategy and a number of significant operations.  He has established Centres of Excellence, teams and capabilities delivering multi-million pound benefits and service improvements and led significant change programmes to build and develop supply chain competence and deliver industry changing approaches.

Parsan is a Global Supply Chain Vice President in Lenzing with more then 20 year of background in different MNCs across textile value chain and strong experience in procurement, sales & operations planning, logistics execution and others. In his current role Parsan is responsible for global implementation of end-to-end supply chain network, development of sustainable supply chain strategy, execution of S&OP process including value based allocation and customer and product portfolio management, continuous reduction of cost-to-serve model as well as supply chain strategy execution and talent management. 

Greg Wilkins has led Veson Nautical's Commercial team since January of 2013. At Veson, Greg is responsible for growing revenue as well as developing the sales strategy and international sales team that make that possible. Greg is a veteran of software sales management and business development with over 23 years of experience. Greg joined Veson Nautical with experience from several Boston based technology companies where he was Vice President of Sales including CollegeWeekLive, Brainshark, and DigitalGuardian. At these companies, he was responsible for sustaining revenue growth as well as building and developing the sales team. Greg holds a BS in Business Administration from Cornell University.

Giovanni has 7 years of experience with market development and international sales in Petrochemicals. Currently he is driving the digitalisation of customer experience for Borealis’ Polyolefin division. Academic education in Finance (BSc) and Corporate Strategy (MSc).

Frederik is a partner at Deloitte Digital with a focus on the chemicals sector. Throughout his career he has supported many chemical companies in growth or commercial excellence related projects. During the past years most of these projects have been enabled by digital technologies. Frederik has an MSc of Bio-Engineering from KU Leuven, a postgraduate of Managerial Sciences of Solvay Business School, and an MBA of Vlerick Management School. Deloitte is a leading Big 4 professional service firm. Its focus is to generate an impact that matters for its clients.

Vicky has over 15 years of experience in Chemical logistics and currently leads the European Procurement team for Agility Chemicals. She and team are providing value to customers in a shrinking and ever changing container shipping market.

Greg has 15 years experience working for Agility Chemicals Logistics providing logistics solutions to Chemical manufacturers. He has held leadership roles across various functions including procurement, ocean operations and most recently 4PL European logistics, during which time he was responsible for the successful implementation of a new TMS platform. In his current role Greg is responsible for leading Agility’s Supply Chain Solutions product, and for delivering projects and solutions to customers across a number of areas, including technology, network optimisation and procurement leverage. 

Mark leads digital transformation solutions for process manufacturers, and is most recently focused on eCommerce, Customer Analytics, and Supplier Relationship Management topics. He has over 25 years of leadership and innovation experience with global enterprises, 2 patents in collaboration technology, and a MBA from Rotterdam School of Management. 

Lucien Besse, COO and co-founder of Shippeo, oversees all commercial and operational activities with shippers. Since 2014, he has worked very closely with Shippeo's customers. Previous to founding Shippeo he was a private equity analyst at Vermeer Capital, a large investment fund, where he worked closely with many transportation companies and gained extensive knowledge about the needs of this market.

Lucien holds a Masters in Finance from SciencesPo, and currently manages, together with the other Shippeo cofounders, more than 70 employees.