Economic Issues
Rudolf Minsch
Prof. Dr. Rudolf Minsch is chief economist of economiesuisse, the top business organization in Switzerland. He is Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board and leads the department of economic policy and education. He is still associated with the University of St. Gallen where he is lecturer at the Executive School. Furthermore, he is visiting professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Chur (Switzerland).
Peter Meier
Peter Meier has worked in the machine tool industry for more than 30 years in the areas of development, sales and overall management. He was sales manager for 5 years and managing director of Starrag for 12 years. Since 1998 Peter Meier has been advising mechanical engineering companies as an independent management consultant. His work focuses on business cycle analysis and corporate planning, including business cycles.
Josua Burkart
Josua Burkart is Partner of the Swiss hpo management consulting ag and Managing Director of hpo forecasting ag. He has many years of consulting experience in different industries. He also leads the team of hpo forecasting, which provides company-specific order intake forecasts for industrial companies. He holds Master’s degrees in International Affairs and Governance from the University of St. Gallen and Sciences Po in Paris.
Artificial Intelligence and Skills
Plamen Kiradjiev
As Global CTO for Industrie 4.0, Plamen’s role is shaping IBM’s worldwide technical strategy around Industrie 4.0 with focus on delivering higher value to manufacturing clients on their transformation journey towards digitization by applying Hybrid Cloud, Analytics and AI from IBM, Open Source and 3rd party technology.
Sahil Tesfu
Sahil Tesfu is an associate partner at McKinsey. She advises clients on organization and people management. She obtained a degree in business administration (Münster) and an MBA (IESE Barcelona; Haas School of Business, Berkeley). Before joining McKinsey, Sahil worked at Capgemini, where she focused on operating model redesign.
Thomas Schneider
Dr. Thomas Schneider is Managing Director Research + Development at TRUMPF. He was born in Ludwigshafen (Germany), studied mechanical engineering and obtained a PhD in the field of Materials in Electrical Engineering at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Before joining TRUMPF, he held various position in the industry and worked as a product development specialist at McKinsey.
Andreas Rauch
Andreas Rauch is Head of Digital Business at GF Machining Solutions and is responsible for digital strategy, the development of digital business models, and sales. He fosters the implementation of IoT with a focus on standardization, M2M communication, big data management, analytics platforms, and customer experience.
Marc Ziegler
Marc Ziegler is partner at Porsche Consulting and leads the global Digital Transformation practice as well as the Data Analytics & AI team. He has been working in digital space for over 24 years and accompanied over 50 clients from various industries on their digitalization journey.
Francisco Betti
Francisco is Head of Advanced Manufacturing Industry at the World Economic Forum. He joinded in May 2015. He is an international development professional and currently leading the Shaping the Future of Advanced Manufacturing and Production initiative. The initiative is helping global leaders anticipate how advanced manufacturing technologies are transforming factories, business models and partnerships, and understanding the implications for the economy, society and environment, to shape a more sustainable and inclusive future.
Cyber Security
Luigi Rancan
Luigi Rancan is Chief Legal & Risk Officer, Mikron Group. He holds a Master degree in law, an Advanced degree in International Law. Admitted to the Bar, he has a post graduate experience in law firm in Civil and Contract Law.
Several years of experience as in-house Group General Counsel (as far from 2007) in industry, automotive and pharmaceutical segment.
Tomi Kankainen
Tomi Kankainen is Chief Digital Officer CDO & VP at Fastems Digital. He has a deep understanding of digitalization and IoT, and start-up culture. Twenty years of experience at working in fast changing and versatile environments on all organizational levels from a global corporate management team executive to a design team member.
Marco Zimmer
As Enterprise Architect at Health Info Net AG (HIN), Marco Zimmer is responsible for designing and defining the technical future of the HIN platform and services. In almost twenty years of IT, he worked as system engineer, project manager, architect, executive manager and freelancer. He holds an MSc in Particle Theory and an MBA ETH in Management, Technology and Economics.
Cyber Security
Fernando Sáenz
Fernando Sáenz is Co-founder and Managing Director at Savvy Data Systems. His experience adds to 11 years at the helm of ICT companies. Under his leadership, Savvy Data Systems has spearheaded development of an industrial platform aimed at the creation of advanced digital products and services for OEMs, which has so far digitally enabled 400 facilities around the world.
Standardisation
Orio Sargenti
More than 30 year of experience in the machine tools industry, first in Numerical Control development. Actually Head of Platform and Architecture, Standards and Conformity at GF Machining Solutions.
Since 2003 actively participating in standardisation activities (ISO and CENELEC). As from 2018 chairperson of ISO TC39 and ISO TC 39/SC 10.
Keynote Speaker
Ambros Zgraggen
Ambros Zgraggen, who holds a Master of Arts degree in German Studies and is a Swiss Chartered Journalist, has been with AlpTransit Gotthard Ltd since 1999 and its Chief Communications Officer since 2009. After completing his studies at Zurich University he worked as a freelance journalist for various daily and weekly newspapers and as an editor for the Swiss Telegraphic Agency (SDA) in Lucerne. From 1990 until the end of 1999 he was an editor and moderator with the German-language Swiss national radio service DRS in Lucerne.