The WBF – The Organization for Production Technology is holding their annual North American conference this week with the theme, Sharpening the Tools of Manufacturing. John Berra, Chairman Emerson Process Management (Retired) will be delivering the keynote presentation, Sharpening the Tools – Small Victories Mean Big Improvements.

Here’s the abstract:

This keynote address will touch on the current state of manufacturing and why the business community, and in particular the automation community, must drive for manufacturing excellence. It will expand on the theme “Sharpening the Tools” by using real examples of the application of automation to improve manufacturing quality, uptime, productivity, and safety. Large improvements can be gained by repeated efforts at “small victories” similar to the way that sharpening is a small effort which, when it is applied repeatedly, makes big improvements in the tool’s performance.

If you’re not already there in person at the WBF, I’ve discovered that the presentation will be streamed live.

The presentation will begin on Tuesday, May 24 at 8:45am EDT (12:45 UTC). I’ll update this post with a link to the recorded presentation once it becomes available following John’s talk.

Finding the low-hanging fruit is a reoccurring theme on this blog and a good way to build upon these small victories, which lead to big improvements and opportunities for bigger challenges.

Mark your calendar if you want to join me in catching the live stream. I understand that other presentations will be carried live across the internet and will update this post when I find out which ones. See the update below. Here’s the complete event agenda.