CMTS at a Glance: Conferences

The Advanced Manufacturing Canada (AMC) conference, for example, is being featured at CMTS for the first time. It is designed to continue the national dialogue on Canada’s productivity challenge. Topics include robotics and automation, automation economics, and workforce development.

Also included in the education portion of the show is RAPID Canada, a forum for the latest developments, applications, and techniques specific to additive manufacturing, 3-D printing, and 3-D scanning.

Keynotes at the show feature speakers who will share their perspectives on technological advancements that will shape Canada’s manufacturing future. Panel discussions are set up to educate the CMTS audience on critical issues facing Canada’s manufacturing sectors, including automotive, aerospace, and medical device manufacturing. Tech talks, technical sessions on the show floor, are hands-on, specific presentations from suppliers that offer real-world case studies and testimonials.

Here are just a few examples of the upcoming content available at the show in the conference centre, tech talk theatre, and Orion ballroom.

Monday, Sept. 25
9:00 - 10:00 am
Opening Keynote: The Future Belongs to Those Who Are Fast!
Jim Carroll is the world’s leading global futurist, trends, and innovation expert, with a massive global blue chip client list. Over the last 20 years, more than 2 million people have shared his insight with his events on stage. Carroll will talk about the readiness of manufacturing, including mass customization, digitization, robotics, and the cloud.

11:00 - 11:30 a.m.
Tech Talk: Automation on the Pallet
Magellan Aerospace Mississauga manufactures and performs maintenance on discrete, complex aero engine fabrications and components with diverse production requirements. This presentation will show how the division took a quantum leap into the 21st-century complex machining world with the acquisition of two fully loaded machine tools and adopted a new philosophy of how to utilize the new technology.
Presenter: Daniel Dowswell, manufacturing & repair technology manager, Magellan Aerospace

3:00 - 3:30 p.m.
Tech Talk: Making Canada a World Leader in Additive Manufacturing
Canada is widely seen as a laggard in the development and adoption of additive manufacturing technologies. However, Canada has many strengths in this area that remain unknown. For example, Canada is home of a number of metal-powder manufacturing companies; Canada is a world leader in cold spray additive manufacturing; and Canada now has two manufacturers of metal AM equipment.This presentation will discuss the next steps that we need to take as a country to further develop our niche expertise in these areas.
Presenter: Philippe Dupuis, president, Precision 3D

Tuesday, Sept. 26
9:00 - 10:00 a.m.
Keynote Presentation: The Future of Additive in Manufacturing
Find out how AM is evolving to produce functional results. Rogers shares how GE Additive is pushing the limits of manufacturing using AM. He will discuss how AM modalities such as fused deposition modeling, laser powder bed fusion, and hybrid manufacturing are changing the economics of manufacturing. He will further touch on how AM is impacting design, materials, production, and servicing across industries, from aerospace, power, and automobile to medical, architectural, and consumer applications, with some real-world examples from GE.
Kirk Rogers, PhD, technology leader, GE Center for Additive Technology Advancement

10:30 - 11:00 a.m.
Why Manufacturers Must Embrace Industry 4.0
This presentation will review data and case studies showing that your competitors are investing in smart manufacturing and data analytics. It will also discuss the reasons they are committed to Industry 4.0, and identify steps you can easily take today to embrace Industry 4.0 in your facility.
Presenter: Will Healy III, marketing management director, Balluff Inc.

How to Make Robotic Machine Tending Solutions for SMEs Flexible, Easy to Use and Cost Effective
Flexible robotic cells can be integral to increasing productivity and decreasing operating costs. The presentation will showcase case studies in which shops with low-volume, high-product-mix challenges have introduced flexible machine tending automation. These companies managed to keep the number of employees constant (no layoffs), yet significantly improved their deliveries, lowered their operating costs, and increased productivity.
Presenter: Jean-Sebastien Neveu, president, Automation Eclair

11:00 - 11:30 a.m.
Tech Talk: Growing Your Business With Equipment Lease Financing
This presentation will cover all the aspects of why a growing manufacturer should consider financing their purchases as opposed to pulling money from their working capital. It will include a discussion from both logistical as well as a taxation perspective.
Presenter: Ken Hurwitz, senior account executive, Blue Chip Leasing

Starting Your Journey on the Internet of Things
Manufacturers worldwide are adopting the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to make production faster, more reliable, and more efficient, but knowing how and where to start can be a hurdle for factory operators. This session will explain how manufacturers can begin integrating information technologies to improve operations.
Presenter: Bob Martin, industry partner solutions manager, Cisco Canada

Programming Robots
This presentation will discuss ideas and case studies showing companies can add collaborative robots to current manufacturing processes. Key takeaways include pre-planning for adding collaborative robots to manufacturing processes and using collaborative robots for simple to complex applications.
Presenter: Gregory Smuk, national automation account manager, In-House Solutions Inc.

2:00 - 3:00 p.m.
Panel Discussion: Automation & Beyond – Closing the Manufacturing Skills Gap
This panel of experts will address some of the following questions that will be part of an interactive hour of discussion with audience participation:
1. Will robots really take over the future workforce?
2. How do we upskill the existing workforce?
3. How can we ensure recent college/university graduates have the skills needed for a career in today’s advanced manufacturing environment?
4. What roles do industry, academia, and government play?
5. Why are the dynamics of skills changing, and how do we adapt?
Panelists: Jim Anderton, content director, engineering.com; Steven Green, president, KUKA Robotics Canada; Greg James, regional sales manager, Festo Didactic Ltd.; Tom Murad, PhD, head of Siemens Engineering & Technology Academy, Siemens Canada; and Farzad Rayegani, PhD, dean, school of applied technology, Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning

Digital Manufacturing: Myths vs. Reality
This discussion will be on what is real and what is myth, and the description of what is driving real impact across industries. Topics will include structured frameworks to identify and capture opportunity, industry trends, common use cases, and best paths forward.
Presenter: Kevin Goering, associate partner, McKinsey & Co.

New Production Concepts Using Collaborative Robots, Mobile Robots, and Digitalization
This presentation will show how new production concepts using collaborative robots, mobile robots, and digitalization are already being used to increase the flexibility of automation projects.
Presenter: Denise Ebenhöech, regional head of advanced robotic applications, KUKA Robotics Corp.

2:30 - 3:00 p.m.
Design for Additive Manufacturing: Guidelines and Case Studies for Metal Applications
This presentation is based on seven components that were developed and manufactured in the scope of separate projects, but have been selected, reviewed, and assessed in a detailed case study particularly and retrospectively within this task. The design of each component was tailored to the specific needs of the chosen AM technology.
Presenters: Burghardt Kloeden, group manager additive manufacturing – electron beam melting, and Bernhard Mueller, head of dept. additive manufacturing, Fraunhofer

4:00 - 4:30 p.m.
Manufacturing With Connected and Collaborative Robots
This presentation will teach what makes a good collaborative application and explain the importance of connectivity.
Presenter: Dale Arndt, director of engineering, FANUC Canada Ltd.

Education: The Challenges and Opportunities in IIoT
Join the discussion of how efforts are being made in workforce development programs and engineering programs to provide the practical skills needed to thrive.
Presenter: Mike Nager, business development manager, Festo

4:30 - 5:00 p.m.
How to Harness Industry 4.0
The presentation will dive into how Industry 4.0 can provide higher diagnostics capabilities, recipe changes, increased safety, minimized downtime, integration into present ERP systems, and save on implementation and long-term costs. In addition, it offers an opportunity to explore proven case studies from around the world and talk about customers’ main concerns and solutions about this powerful shift.
Presenter: Samiul Islam, sales applications engineer, EIT, ifm efector Inc.

Panel Discussion: R&I = R&D – How SMEs Are Meeting Research and Development Through Partnerships With Their Local Colleges
Ontario colleges have been making great strides toward helping local businesses overcome obstacles and mitigate risk through collaborative projects, oftentimes funded by federal, provincial, and regional grants. In this presentation, Niagara College will use case studies to share project-related advanced manufacturing success stories.
Panelists: Gordon Koslowski, research project manager, Niagara College Canada; Linda Grimo, manager, Grimo Nut Nursery; and Dwayne Charette, director, global supply chain & manufacturing, Airbus Helicopter

Wednesday, Sept. 27
9:00 - 10:00 a.m.
Keynote Presentation: Deep Dive Into Automation and Artificial Intelligence
As the high-tech and manufacturing worlds merge—with artificial intelligence and machine learning seen as driving forces—automation is creating new opportunities to drive new levels of efficiency across the entire supply chain for manufacturers. Automation goes far beyond control systems, diving deeper into operational data to unlock new insights from massive operational data sets that are starting to emerge.
Presenter: Humera Malik, CEO, Dat-uh

10:30 - 11:00 a.m.
The Need for Robots and Vision to Work Together in Manufacturing
This presentation will touch on various ways to link these devices together in a manufacturing setting to allow for robots, vision sensors, and programmable logic controllers (PLCs) to communicate and exchange data to perform various inline dimensional inspection, robot guidance, and robot calibration tasks with decision-making capabilities.
Presenter: Ira Greenberg, business development manager, Bluewrist Inc.

Growing and Sustaining a Well-Trained, Automation-Capable, Advanced Manufacturing Workforce With a Strong On-the-Job-Training Program
Before their competitors do, manufacturers should commit to creating a standardized OJT program using best practices. The speaker will talk about the importance of creating and implementing a strong OJT standardized work program, which is a driver of manufacturing competitiveness, tied directly to enhanced productivity, quality, innovation, safety, and profitability.
Presenter: Jeannine Kunz, vice president, ToolingU-SME

10:30 - 11:30 a.m.
Panel Discussion: Barriers and Challenges of Manufacturing Competitiveness
In this panel, industry thought leaders and experts will discuss and explore some of the following challenges for Canadian manufacturing:
• Global competition
• Hiring qualified workers
• Reducing operational costs
• Impacts of the changing Canadian dollar
• Effective supply chain management
• How implementation of Innovation and Technology remains a significant challenge
Panelists: Jim Anderton, content director of engineering.com; Vibhoosh Gupta, product portfolio manager, GE Automation & Controls; Jennifer Smith, executive vice president of global market solutions and engineering, Christie Digital Systems; and Jason MacFarlane, head of advanced manufacturing, venture services, MaRS Discovery District

11:00 - 11:30 a.m.
Tech Talk: The Myths of Tool Balancing
The barrage of targeted marketing campaigns, uniformed sales rhetoric, and word-of-mouth has created a lot of misconceptions about balance. As someone who has over 40 years’ manufacturing experience, I want to share the eye-opening insights I have gained into the industry as it pertains to balance and the benefits or pitfalls it can create.
Presenter: Matt Seessle, applications sales specialist, HAIMER

How Vision Has Moved From Traditional Pass/Fail to Digitally Tracking Data in the Manufacturing Environment
Learn how vision systems reduce scrap by monitoring process variables using statistical information, as well as how vision has moved from traditional pass/fail to it tracking human interaction in the manufacturing environment.
Presenter: Sean Lett, automation and vision sales manager, Radix Inc.

How to Bolster the Digital Transformation of Innovative Manufacturers
Learn more about a short history of what has been the manufacturing 4.0 journey for le CRIQ, an applied R&D center that has worked at creating smart systems to help innovative companies in Quebec.
Presenter: Francois Gingras, director of productivity and industrial systems, le CRIQ

2:00 - 2:30 p.m.
Moving Past the Hype of Industry 4.0: Next Steps for Canadian SMEs
This presentation will feature Canadian Industry 4.0 best practices from the perspective of Siemens Canada.
Presenter: Michael Gardiner, director, industry strategy, Siemens Canada

Flexible Tools for Collaborative Robots
Depending on the process you want to automate, there are many flexible tools that will help optimize your automation by enhancing your robot arm capabilities. Learn more about the different ways in which you can enhance your collaborative robot.
Presenter: Catherine Bernier, channel sales manager, Robotiq

2:00 - 3:00 p.m.
Panel Discussion: Apprenticeships With a Modern Twist – Addressing the Skills Gap
In this panel discussion, participants explore the current collaborative approach to apprenticeships, involving manufacturers, workforce educators, and government. The panel will discuss how companies and associations are engaging their local municipalities and government to build a pipeline and leverage apprenticeships, external funding, and other external partners to address their workforce requirements.
Panelists: Ray Buxton, general manager, Mazak Corporation Canada; Robert Cattle, executive director, CTMA; Jeannine Kunz, vice president, ToolingU-SME; Mike Ouellette, general manager, St. Clair College Skilled Trades Regional Training Centre

2:30 - 3:00 p.m.
Practical Applications and Benefits of Industry 4.0
Attend this session to hear how two companies deployed such solutions in their production facilities and learn about the benefits gained through these technologies.
Presenter: Michel Kakos, president and co-owner, Centris Technologies

Industry 4.0/Collaborative Gripping
The virtual world is continuously changing. Systems are getting faster, safer, more effective, and independent. This development is making increasing access into the world of production and manufacturing. The increasing number of customized solutions is presenting new challenges for production processes. The manufacturing methods of the future will be versatile, efficient and integrated. Processes will be quickly and easily adaptable to new products.
Presenter: Chris Nandor, RSM Ontario/West Canada, SCHUNK Canada

4:00 - 4:30 p.m.
Cost-Effective Strategies for Final Machining of Metal Additive Parts
Learn from innovative solutions to complex additive manufacturing problems developed and tested at Renishaw’s Canadian Solution Centre in Kitchener, Ont.
Presenter: Mark Kirby, additive manufacturing business manager, Renishaw

Human Age: Future Forces at Work
Global labour markets are less elastic today than they once were; they recover more slowly and produce growing inequality. Systems for aligning labour supply and demand no longer function as before. The result is widespread skills shortage despite high unemployment. The labour market is hampered by the lack of talent liquidity and limited investment, while traditional work models compete with new, more flexible alternatives. This new age of work will require a new playbook, and employers will need the agility and talent to succeed in the reconfigured labour market.
Presenter: Darlene Minatel, vice president & general manager, Manpower Canada

Robotic Welding in the Era of the Industry 4.0: Adaptive Robotic and Robotic Without Programming
In the era of Industry 4.0, where manufacturers gain more and more control over their production, there is today a growing need for low-volume/high-mix production. Factories and shops need robotic systems more adaptive and flexible, and systems that can auto-generate their own programs from CAD or even 3-D scanning. The one industry where this is particularly true is the welding process in the metalworking industry.
Presenter: Louis Dicaire, general director, AGT Robotics

4:30 - 5:00 p.m.
Smart and Lean With OEE and Advanced Shop Floor Management Technology
Manufacturing firms leverage big data metrics to achieve greater efficiency and productivity. The interactions of the real and virtual worlds are the backbone of such smart production founded on the principles of lean.
Presenter: Mohamed Abuali, managing director, Americas, FORCAM

Thursday, Sept. 28
9:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
Boot Camp: Changing the World, One Kaizen at a Time
This is a Toyota Productions System (TPS) simulation workshop suitable for small, medium, and large organizations in production, fabrication, maintenance or refurbishment, mass production, and job shop environments, and any industry. Participants will learn the common challenges and solutions, central role of leadership in successful cultural transformation, and a step-by-step TPS implementation process.
Presenter: Matt Elson, president, True North Thinking