IMTS Smarter Sourcing Symposium Tackles Supply Chain Challenges
August 3, 2022
The inaugural IMTS Smarter Sourcing Symposium, presented by IMTS and The Onshoring Project, will be held at IMTS 2022 and will provide guidance, tools, and tactics to create more profitable domestic sourcing using lean and agile suppliers. The symposium runs from 8:30 to 11:00 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 16, and is part of the conference agenda at IMTS – The International Manufacturing Technology Show, held at Chicago’s McCormick Place from Sept. 12 to 17.
“The lessons of the last two years prove we need to expand our domestic manufacturing base and reevaluate supply chain response capabilities,” says Ryan Kelly, general manager of AMT’s San Francisco Tech Lab (AMT – The Association For Manufacturing Technology owns and produces IMTS). “The Smarter Sourcing Symposium will show OEMs, tier suppliers, contract manufacturers, and sourcing/purchasing agents how working with lean domestic suppliers makes a positive business impact and improves resiliency.”
This supply chain symposium is a result of The Onshoring Project, a collaboration of leadership from AMT, Gardner Business Media, IndustryWeek, the Reshoring Initiative, HELPFUL, and the Aerospace and Specialty Metals Group (ASMG). Registration for the symposium includes an exhibit hall pass for IMTS 2022, breakfast, and complimentary subscriptions to Modern Machine Shop and IndustryWeek magazines. Topics and speakers, which were curated by Gardner Business Media, include:
- Manufacturing Critical-path Time (MCT), a metric that quantifies true lead-time relative to waste and identifies areas for lean improvements; presented by Paul Ericksen, consultant, author, and supply chain columnist for IndustryWeek.
- Using Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) instead of purchasing price. Harry Moser, founder of The Reshoring Initiative, demonstrates how to identify the 30% of your imports that can be sourced more profitably domestically. He will also introduce a reshoring case study featuring Hardinge.
- The Supply Chain Interoperability Specification (SCIS), a framework that enables resilient, self-healing supply chains capable of efficiently fulfilling orders; presented by Benjamin Treuhaft, CEO of HELPFUL.
- Panel discussion and audience Q&A.
Expert Panel
Paul Erickson authors a monthly supply chain column for IndustryWeek. He has 40 years of experience in industry, primarily in supply management at two large original equipment manufacturers. At the second, he was chief procurement officer. He then went on to head up a large, multi-year supply chain flexibility initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. He presently is an executive-level consultant and author of a book on breaking down the walls of purchasing silos.
“My IMTS 2022 presentation shows how Manufacturing Critical-path Time can be used as a metric to evaluate a supplier’s capability of fulfilling orders, especially when demand spikes or dips compared to forecasted demand,” says Erickson. “I will also show how to maximize lean supply chain performance efforts and translate the financial benefits into terms that increase C-level understanding.”
After a career that included serving as North American president and chairman emeritus of GF AgieCharmilles (now GF Machining Solutions, IMTS booth #338329), Harry Moser founded the Reshoring Initiative to help bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States. He says that instead of purchase piece price, buyers should use Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) so that they account for the true cost of manufacturing, which includes inventory in transit, logistics, balance sheet, the cost of protecting intellectual property, and more. Suppliers and job shops can use TCO principles to sell smarter against imports, such as by pointing out the cost of quality issues, emergency shipping of replacement parts, and faster design iterations/time-to-market.
“Reshoring has surged from 6,000 manufacturing jobs per year in 2010 to 260,000 jobs in 2021,” says Moser. “Understanding the costs and increasing risks of offshoring have driven that surge because more OEMs see the benefits of domestic sourcing.”
Benjamin Treuhaft was an early member of HELPFUL, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization born at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic as a community where engineering, science, medicine, and industry solved problems relating to supply chain disruption, and is now its CEO. As of today, more than 20,000 individuals from around the world have contributed to solving the wicked challenges of how to meet needs in the context of disrupted supply chains by producing open innovation. The Supply Chain Interoperability Specification (SCIS) is the result of voluntary collaboration between government scientists, independent researchers, field experts, and the HELPFUL nonprofit.
“The SCIS framework has the potential to help resolve the problems the world is experiencing due to supply chain disruption,” says Treuhaft. “By specifying requirements for nodes to interact and share information, SCIS enables all bases of supply to find one another and transact to meet needs.”
Smarter Sourcing Symposium panel moderator Ryan Kelly has been the GM of AMT’s San Francisco Tech Lab since 2019 and is the host of the Smart(er) Shop video series on IMTS+. Prior to that, he was a senior product manager at Xometry, a leading AI-enabled marketplace for on-demand manufacturing that enables buyers to efficiently source on-demand manufactured parts and that empowers sellers of manufacturing services to grow their businesses.
“The conference program, investor forum, and specialty events for women in manufacturing, job shops, and additive manufacturing expand the appeal of IMTS 2022 to senior levels within an organization,” says Kelly. “The solutions to supply chain disruptions and chronic labor shortages can only be solved through new ways of doing business and applying advanced manufacturing technology. Spending a few days in the exhibit halls and conference rooms at IMTS 2022 will be the smartest time investment anyone in manufacturing can make.”
Visit HERE to register.
