Smart Lean Ecosystems Manufacturing Conference At Purdue University

Dauch Center for the Management of Manufacturing Enterprises (DCMME), a Global Supply Chain Management Initiative (GSCMI) by the Krannert School of Management, hosted the 29^th edition of the Smart Lean Ecosystems Manufacturing Conference at the Purdue Memorial Union building on the 30^th of September, 2016.

The conference saw MBA/Masters students as well as faculties and people from the industry attending in numbers. The focus of this conference was how Smart and Lean Ecosystems is helping the manufacturing industry in optimizing their processes, reducing costs and achieve higher efficiency. Almost 7 million manufacturing jobs have been lost in the US between 1980 and 2010. The lack of manufacturing related courses in universities is also preventing rejuvenation of the sector.

Dr. Ananth Iyer, DCMME Center Director gave the opening remarks stressing on the importance of smart manufacturing tools in the industry and what are the productivity benefits of using such tools in practical implementation. Director of C Design Lab, Mr. Karthik Ramani was the first speaker of the day. Mr. Antoine van Agtmael, co-author of “The Smartest Places on Earth” and CEO of Emerging Markets Management was the key note speaker. He is credited to have coined the word “emerging” in emerging market. Talking about the era of smart work than cheap work, he said that sharing brainpower & using new methods, materials and innovations will help changing Rustbelts to Brainbelts by stating examples like Akron OH, Albany NY and Eindhoven Netherlands among others. Dr. Ananth Iyer closed the first half of the conference by talking about intellectual arbitrage to describe how cross application of concepts are leading to innovations and the culture of Form, Function, Forever and For all.

The conference also organized a Poster Presentation competition wherein the students had to showcase their learnings from their recent internships. Our students, Gourav Singhal and Akarsh Kosuri bagged the first and second positions respectively by impressing the judges through their analytical and presentation skills.

Gourav said, “My overall experience of participating in the conference has been an enriching learning journey. I was able to relate all my supply chain learnings with the real world applications. It provided me a great platform to interact with some of the best industry leaders and a chance to understand the latest market scenario from the experts themselves. My experience of participating in an international forum event was unique in itself as I could apply my learnings from my MBA curriculum along with my practical experience gained during my internship at Cummins Inc. in an innovative way. I would encourage others to participate in similar kind of events, as it gives you international exposure and helps broaden your horizon.”

Akarsh quoted, “The DCMME conference has been an event characterized with significant learning experience, as this event brought together a panel of industry experts to share their thoughts on "smart, lean ecosystems" with the Purdue community. Through this conference I was able to showcase my internship accomplishments at Cargill India Limited to supply chain industry professionals and their feedback proved to be a very valuable and enriching experience as I was able to intertwine the classroom knowledge with the real world applications. All the talks have resonated with me as they gave an insight into the latest disruptions and innovations taking place in the manufacturing domain and what the future beholds for smart supply chains."

Congratulations to Gourav and Akarsh for bringing laurels to the IIM Udaipur community. The biggest takeaway from this conference: the future is going to be “all about connecting and connectedness.”

**Published on behalf of Media & Industry Interaction Cell, IIM Udaipur.