The Industry Forum brings together practitioners, R&D leaders, and senior engineers from companies adopting and shaping the technologies discussed in the academic track. Talks emphasise real deployments, business outcomes, and open challenges where the research community can contribute.

Industry Forum talks are open to all conference attendees as part of the regular registration. No additional fee applies.

Industry Forum Programme

From Pilot to Production — Scaling AI-driven Predictive Maintenance Across 200 Plants

Sarah LinVP Engineering, NorthGrid Energy

Day 1, 11:00 – 11:45 Auditorium B

A frank account of NorthGrid Energy’s three-year journey rolling out AI-driven predictive maintenance across its global plant fleet — what worked, what failed, and what the team would do differently. Includes specifics on data infrastructure, model governance, and the human factors that ultimately determined success.

Open Source on the Plant Floor — Lessons from a Migration to OPC UA over MQTT

Carlos MendesDirector of Industrial IoT, MakerWorks Manufacturing

Day 1, 11:50 – 12:35 Auditorium B

MakerWorks replaced a fragmented mix of legacy SCADA gateways with an open-source OPC UA + MQTT architecture. Carlos shares the migration plan, performance numbers, and a candid view on which open-source projects were production-ready and which weren’t.

Collaborative Robots in High-Mix Low-Volume Assembly — A Practitioner's View

Aiko TanakaHead of Robotics R&D, Pacific Robotics

Day 2, 11:00 – 11:45 Auditorium B

Pacific Robotics has deployed cobots in over 40 high-mix low-volume assembly cells. Aiko discusses the safety architecture, programming paradigms (block-based vs script), and the operator-acceptance challenges that often dominate ROI calculations.

Wide-Bandgap Drives in the Field — One Year of Production Data

Daniel OkaforLead Architect, Continental Drives Group

Day 2, 11:50 – 12:35 Auditorium B

After a year of running SiC-based drives in production at customer sites, Daniel presents thermal, EMI, and reliability data that doesn’t usually make it into datasheets — and what design tradeoffs his team made when the textbook recommendations broke down.

Panel Discussion

A moderated panel on “What can academia do for industry over the next five years?” follows the Day 2 talks, featuring all four Industry Forum speakers and two academic panellists from the keynote programme.

When — Day 2, 14:00 – 15:00 Where — Auditorium B Moderator — TBA