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Why Your Operators Are Still Your Best Manufacturing Investment

SOUTHEAST Session: Your next efficiency breakthrough isn't hiding in a machine learning algorithm. It's walking around your shop floor right now. While manufacturing obsesses over AI, 85% of operations still depend on human expertise. The CNC programmer who knows exactly when to adjust spindle speeds. The veteran welder who spots perfect joints in seconds. The setup technician whose alignment cuts cycle times. These operators don't just run your processes, they've mastered them. They hold the institutional knowledge that separates good production from great production. But your systems can't see what they know, creating a costly blind spot. Mid-market manufacturers nationwide face the same challenge: valuable knowledge trapped in individual heads instead of being scaled digitally. The result is lost efficiency because operator expertise can’t integrate with core systems. Companies overcoming this aren’t layering more machine learning. They’re building systems that amplify human intelligence. They digitize workflows, connect teams to real-time data, and create interfaces designed around how operators think and work, not the other way around. In this session, Docket will reveal how shop floor digitization platforms close the gap between operator expertise and digital execution. You’ll gain practical insights into smart manufacturing systems that support your frontline, enabling faster setups, higher accuracy, and smoother production. At a time when manufacturers chase the next big overhaul, don’t overlook the team that got you here. The goal isn’t replacing human insight, it’s designing systems that can multiply it.

From Blind Spots to Sweet Spots: Architecting Intelligent Visibility in Manufacturing Supply Chains

SOUTHEAST Session: Manufacturers today are under immense pressure to navigate supply chain complexity while improving agility, customer responsiveness and cost efficiency. The industry has invested years in enabling core digital foundations like ERP, MES, WMS and operational dashboards; however, persistent blind spots across sourcing, production, inventory, logistics, sales and aftermarket services continue to erode operational performance and limit strategic decision-making. According to a 2025 survey of 300 mid-market manufacturers, only 45% have recently improved end-to- end- supply chain visibility, indicating that there is significant room for investment and improvement. Supply Chain visibility will be the future of manufacturing. A recent survey by Deloitte showed that 76% of manufacturers report limited visibility across their supply chain, making traceability a key issue in today’s environment. Data visibility is essential to a resilient supply chain; however, in a survey of 506 supply chain leaders, only 19% of organizations have embedded scenario planning into their operations, limiting their ability to anticipate and respond to disruption. The answer to fixing these blind spots isn’t yet another dashboard or point solution, but a digitally engineered supply chain with intelligent, end-to-end visibility and traceability across the manufacturing value chain. In this presentation, we explore why blind spots emerge and how a unified theme of real-time traceability can act as a digital thread to convert blind spots into sweet spots for manufacturers.

Digital Threads and Smart Factories: The IoT Advantage in Manufacturing

SOUTHEAST Session: As global manufacturing enters the next wave of industrial transformation, the convergence of digital threads and IoT is reshaping the way products are designed, built, and maintained. A digital thread creates a seamless flow of data across the product lifecycle — from design and engineering to production and aftermarket service. When paired with IoT-enabled smart factories, this integration unlocks unprecedented operational visibility, agility, and intelligence. This session explores how manufacturers are leveraging IoT to create connected ecosystems that power predictive maintenance, real-time quality control, autonomous operations, and closed-loop decision-making. We will discuss practical frameworks for implementing digital threads and highlight ROI-driven success stories from discrete and process manufacturing.

Bridging the Gap: How Secure Remote Access Powers Manufacturing IT/OT Convergence

SOUTHEAST Session: Manufacturing is undergoing rapid digital transformation—driven by predictive maintenance, AI-driven insights, and smart factories. Yet IT/OT convergence is not achieved in strategy documents; it is lived daily through remote access, where people, vendors, and data cross into critical environments. This presentation explores the unique challenges CISOs and OT teams face—legacy patching debt, vendor access sprawl, ransomware pressure, and compliance demands—and why secure OT remote access is the essential bridge to efficiency, resilience, and productivity. Through industry case studies, we’ll examine how leaders are standardizing connectivity, reducing downtime costs, and enabling AI-driven operations—while ensuring security never falls behind transformation.

Veena Sriram

Speaker at SOUTHEAST: Veena Sriram, Vice President, Supply Chain Transformation, Sutherland Global

Christian Jewell

Speaker at SOUTHEAST: Christian Jewell, Special Projects Supervisor, Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence

New Growth Strategies for Small and Medium CNC Shops

SOUTHEAST Session: Are you getting the most out of your operations? Many manufacturers leave performance on the table due to outdated CNC machining processes, practices and programming. In this expert panel presentation, FANUC America’s Executive Director of Aerospace and Defense Rick Schultz will lead a discussion about how to take advantage of new technologies, create automation strategies, and utilize IOT and digitalization software to drive operational success. Audience Takeaways: -Learn growth strategies on how to keep machining operations competitive and profitable. -Hear from industry leaders on their realistic approaches to AI for impactful ROI. -How to mitigate pain points with optimizing equipment and taking advantage of advanced machining functionality. -Best practices on setting up shops to support more flexible and effective operations. -Using cutting-edge CNC technology, IoT, digitalization and other tools to drive operational success. -Phasing in newer technologies into existing production lines. -Planning and preparing for your next CAPEX for the best ROI. -How to be effective and productive while facing a tight labor market and a growing skills gap. -Steps to a more self-reliant company using in-house capabilities. -Developing meaningful partnerships in the industry.