Kenneth Cowan
Speaker at SOUTHEAST: Kenneth Cowan, Vice President, Paperless Parts
Speaker at SOUTHEAST: Kenneth Cowan, Vice President, Paperless Parts
SOUTHEAST Session: Understand the essential steps for achieving CMMC compliance in this essential session. Colin Gilchrist will provide a comprehensive guide for organizations looking to bridge the gap between cybersecurity requirements and business growth, ensuring a strong compliance foundation.
Speaker at SOUTHEAST: David Babcock, Director of Technical PreSales, Ashling Partners
Speaker at SOUTHEAST: Rob Sims, Founder & CTO, Alchemi Data Management, Inc.
SOUTHEAST Session:
SOUTHEAST Session: In today's highly competitive manufacturing landscape, operational efficiency is more critical than ever. Yet, excessive energy consumption and unplanned downtime remain major challenges, significantly impacting productivity and costs. Traditional maintenance strategies often fail to address the root causes of inefficiencies, leading to unnecessary energy waste and unexpected failures. This session explores Energy-Centered Maintenance (ECM)—a data-driven, AI-powered approach that goes beyond conventional reliability-centered maintenance by integrating energy efficiency as a key decision-making factor. By leveraging advanced IoT sensors, AI-driven analytics, and real-time machine health monitoring, manufacturers can proactively detect faults, minimize energy loss, and extend asset life. Through real-world case studies and industry insights, attendees will learn how ECM enables manufacturers to reduce operational expenses, prevent unplanned downtime, and achieve sustainability goals—all without compromising productivity. The session will also highlight how machine learning and AI-driven predictive analytics help manufacturers make smarter maintenance decisions, optimizing energy use while ensuring equipment reliability. Whether you're looking to cut energy costs, enhance machine uptime, or align with Industry 4.0 and sustainability initiatives, this session will provide practical takeaways to help you transform your maintenance strategy. Learning Objectives Understand the limitations of traditional maintenance strategies and how excessive energy waste and unexpected downtime impact manufacturing costs and efficiency. Explore the principles of Energy-Centered Maintenance (ECM) and how AI-driven predictive analytics can optimize machine performance, reduce energy waste, and prevent costly breakdowns.
SOUTHEAST Session: Manufacturers from fabricators to assembly shops are all challenged with workforce woes, the need to boost productivity and the endless quest for quality. Knowing automation is the answer is one thing, but actually finding real success with technology investments can feel challenging and risky. How do you know what will truly bring value to the organization? How do you determine the return? And now with the hype of Artificial Intelligence (AI) seemingly on every product, how do manufacturing leaders determine the right places to invest limited time and capital budgets? In this session, we will delve into the ever-evolving landscape of automation & AI in the factory and take a look at technologies that are having a real impact today across the shop floor. Then we will stare into the crystal ball to look forward at technologies that are on the near horizon that manufacturing leaders should be keeping an eye on. Covering important topics like human-robot collaboration, automated equipment tending, data-driven insights, cobot welding, predictive maintenance, robot guided vision, bin picking, collaborative automation, quality inspections, and much more, attendees should leave this session ready to make value-creating technology investments in their business. Join us as we explore how AI is reshaping the factory floor — one algorithm at a time.
SOUTHEAST Session: Moderated by: Jamie Goettler, BTX Precision Rather than start with a discussion of all the technologies available in the industrial marketplace, this panel session will start by outlining the primary concerns of manufacturing businesses. By first appealing to what the audience (machining businesses) cares about most at the start, the panel will logically ease into a discussion of how available technologies can help achieve greater outcomes for these businesses…in other words, solutions to the preeminent problems. Among the concerns highlighted at the outset will be improving competitiveness (domestically and globally), throughput (business growth), and yes productivity in the face of the manufacturing skills gap. The panel will be represented by industry leaders who either are dealing with these concerns directly, or those that have a “front row seat” to a variety of companies that seek to survive and thrive. Technologies that will be addressed will likely include automation, robotics, workforce training, machining technology, machine monitoring, software and AI to name a few.
SOUTHEAST Session: Join us for an insightful and action-packed session that reveals how smart process optimization is transforming financial, logistical, and ecommerce operations. Whether you're looking to streamline workflows, boost accuracy, or scale your business, this presentation delivers practical strategies. Takeaways and What You'll Learn The latest improvements in shipping, fulfillment, and order flow management that are elevating logistics and customer satisfaction. Sail seamlessly! Learn from two real-world business ecommerce customer integration examples—Shopify and BigCommerce—demonstrating how seamless connections with platforms like Acumatica, SAP Business One, and an AI Pricing Agent can streamline operations and support scalable growth. Spotlight Feature: Pricing Automation Tool - Say goodbye to manual pricing guesswork! Discover how this: Optimizes margins in real time Syncs across multiple channels Executes hands-free updates Keeps your pricing competitive—automatically Whether you're in finance, logistics, or ecommerce, this session is will provide insights to help you work smarter, not harder. Don’t miss your chance to see how innovation is driving scalable growth and operational excellence.
SOUTHEAST Session: Digital twins are rapidly becoming a cornerstone of advanced manufacturing, enabling companies to simulate, optimize, and validate their production processes in a virtual environment before committing to physical execution. This presentation explores the value of digital twins specifically in the domains of CNC machining, robotic automation, and the broader virtual factory. In CNC machining, digital twins replicate the behavior of machines, tools, and part geometries, allowing for precise simulation of toolpaths and real-time detection of potential collisions, over-travel, and inefficiencies. By simulating the exact machine kinematics, spindle dynamics, and tool libraries, manufacturers can reduce setup times, improve part quality, and significantly lower the risk of costly rework or downtime. In robotic work cells, digital twins mirror robotic behavior, motion, and task sequences. This enables manufacturers to program, test, and optimize robot trajectories and tool interactions virtually - ensuring safety, cycle time optimization, and maximum utilization of expensive automation assets. Collision detection, reach analysis, and process synchronization can all be handled digitally before deployment on the shop floor. At the virtual factory level, digital twins provide a holistic view of the entire manufacturing environment - integrating machines, robotics, material flow, operators, and logistics into a unified simulation. This enables strategic decision-making, accurate capacity planning, and the ability to test process changes in a risk-free virtual environment. The result is greater agility, resilience, and efficiency across the entire production lifecycle. Attendees will gain insight into how digital twins reduce risk, increase productivity, and enable smarter planning across manufacturing operations. By harnessing digital twins in CNC machining, robotic systems, and factory-wide simulations, companies can accelerate their journey toward digital transformation and fully realize the promise of Industry 4.0.