Thanks to all who made NextGen a success

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the November 2023 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

November 2023

Last month, I had the pleasure of attending the NextGen Supply Chain Awards in Chicago. It was my first time attending the conference, which was in its fifth year, and I came away impressed with both the content and the quality of professionals I met in Chicago. This year’s conference—Strategies for a Digital Future—featured nearly 50 speakers and included CEOs and senior vice presidents, founders and innovators, leading academics and researchers, and top consultants. Over two days of the event at the Chicago Athletic Association, we learned more about artificial intelligence and predictive analytics, robotics and machine learning, fulfillment…

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Last month, I had the pleasure of attending the NextGen Supply Chain Awards in Chicago. It was my first time attending the conference, which was in its fifth year, and I came away impressed with both the content and the quality of professionals I met in Chicago.

This year’s conference—Strategies for a Digital Future—featured nearly 50 speakers and included CEOs and senior vice presidents, founders and innovators, leading academics and researchers, and top consultants.

Over two days of the event at the Chicago Athletic Association, we learned more about artificial intelligence and predictive analytics, robotics and machine learning, fulfillment and delivery, procurement, and nearshoring/reshoring. And that was just on day one.

We also handed out a number of awards. Kimberly-Clark was our Visionary Award winner and LimeLoop was named the NextGen Start Up Award winner. Our End User Awards went to Gap (Robotics), Carrier (Digital Transformation) and Macy’s (Predictive Analytics), while Covariant (Robotics), Gather AI (Artificial Intelligence), Kenco Group (Predictive Analytics) and ETQ (Digital Transformation) were our NextGen Solution Provider Award winners. Congratulations to all.

Any time an event goes off without a major hitch, there are many people who deserve thanks. I want to thank NextGen Event Director Elena Parsons and her team (Judy Parsons and Christine Parsons) for providing the expertise to organize the entire event. Our audio and presentations were expertly administered by Art Lansdon from Art for Hire.

Of course, Peerless Media President & CEO Brian Ceraolo deserves a lot of credit for demanding we put on a great event. And then there is Bob Trebilcock. As the NextGen Program Director, Bob is responsible for the great content everyone enjoyed over the two-day event. But even Bob can’t do it alone, and I want to send a special thank you to the NextGen Supply Chain Conference Advisory Board. There are too many names to list individually, but without your guidance and leadership, we wouldn’t be able to produce this event.

Karen Bligh, Peerless Media’s Marketing Director, also deserves a big thank you. Karen has been keeping all of us up to date for months on the event in addition to plenty of other behind-the-scenes jobs to help ensure a smooth event. And let’s not forget our host venue, the Chicago Athletic Association for providing the space and delicious food throughout the conference.

Finally, any event is nothing without sponsors. I want to extend a personal thank you to each of you. Many thank yous go out to our Diamond Sponsors Honeywell Intelligrated and SDI; Platinum Sponsors Korber and Zion Solutions Group; Gold Sponsors Hai Robotics, Fortna, Equipment Depot, and TeamViewer; Silver Sponsors Swisslog and Vanderlande; and Associate Sponsors ASCM, Argon&Co, Dematic, ikigai, TGW, Fourkites, Packsize and LeanDNA.

And, one last thank you to all our speakers and, of course, attendees for making the 2023 NextGen Supply Chain Conference a great success. If you weren’t able to attend this year, don’t worry, we’re going to do it all over again in 2024, so look for information on that event in the coming months.

SC
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