Steve George
Speaker at WEST: Steve George, Senior Manager Product Engineering – Solid Rounds, Kennametal
Speaker at WEST: Steve George, Senior Manager Product Engineering – Solid Rounds, Kennametal
WEST Session: As manufacturers face new requirements to safeguard Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) under CMMC 2.0, many see compliance as a costly obligation. Yet, when implemented as intended, these same controls create a foundation for operational excellence—connecting machines and data securely, automating oversight, and strengthening resilience. From CUI to ROI reveals how aligning cybersecurity, compliance, and smart manufacturing turns regulatory readiness into measurable business performance and long-term return on investment.
Speaker at WEST: Jordan Dugosh, Account Executive – TOLA/LATAM, Dispel
WEST 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.
Speaker at WEST: Anmol Singh, Founder and CEO, Fabriom
WEST Session: AI promises to transform manufacturing and service operations, but for most teams the challenge is not algorithms—it’s integration and adoption. This session will be co-presented by industry experts who will share real-world lessons from deploying AI-powered workflows at an e-recycling facility and in design-for-manufacture (DfM) and quoting. Attendees will learn a practical framework for deciding when to use deterministic software workflows, when to embed AI as an enabler, and when—if ever—to rely on autonomous AI “agents.” Using concrete metrics, we’ll show how hybrid approaches reduce cost, latency, and risk while delivering measurable gains. We will also describe the importance of human feedback in improving accuracy metrics. This is an inside look at what’s working (and what isn’t) as we automate inspections, quoting, and compliance tasks across the physical and digital sides of manufacturing. You’ll leave with a decision surface you can apply immediately to your own operations.
Speaker at WEST: Chris Joco, Principal Solutions Architect, DSD Business Systems
WEST Session: Things are changing quickly. Five years ago, we were telling welders to learn the code, now we're telling coders to learn to weld. How can manufacturers, who live and die by process reliability and scalability take advantage of tools that can't seem to do simple addition reliably. As the saying goes, 'there's no such thing as a bad tool, only the wrong tool for the job'. We're about to witness a step change in the adoption of true continuous improvement methodologies, and most people don't even see it coming.
Speaker at WEST: Paul Boris, Strategic Accounts, Manufacturing & Industrial Operations, UiPath
Speaker at WEST: Olivier Thenoz, Principal Product Manager, Production Machining Software, Hexagon