2020 brought a wave of cancelled programs across electronics categories for one simple reason: for decades we’ve been optimizing for the wrong thing. Build Better 2021 is a manufacturing summit bringing together leaders in electronics design, engineering, and manufacturing to discuss what’s working, what isn’t, and how to build a better future.
The second annual manufacturing summit will feature real practitioners building some of the world’s most innovative products. Learn from what others have tried, and join the conversation on how you’re keeping builds on schedule, driving product innovation, and preparing for a low or no-travel 2021.
Speaker: Anna-Katrina Shedletsky (CEO, Instrumental)
Welcome remarks and introduction to our speakers and sponsors. You’ll also get important info on how to participate interactive sessions on our event platform.
Speaker: Anna-Katrina Shedletsky (CEO, Instrumental)
2020 forced digital innovation on the manufacturing industry – catalyzing a decade of badly needed change. From remote builds, to digitizing core workflows like failure analysis, to remote real-time monitoring and communication, we discuss the learnings, experiences, and best practices that evolved from the disruptions of 2020.
Speaker: Caitlin Kalinowski (VR Hardware, Facebook)
Learn how Facebook Reality Labs leveraged a digital-first approach to NPI to stay on schedule and launch the Oculus Quest 2 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Speakers: Jeff Lutz (former VP of NPI at Motorola, Google); Anna-Katrina Shedletsky (CEO, Instrumental)
Electronics manufacturing loses billions of dollars every year due to misaligned incentives across the supply chain. The cost of leaving misalignment unaddressed is lower margins, late shipments, and low trust between suppliers, CMs, and OEMs.
Join us for a fireside chat with NPI and supply chain veteran Jeff Lutz on how manufacturing leaders are correcting these issues through cultural change, and how you can start.
In this panel discussion, industry experts discuss how manufacturing technology has evolved and where engineering and manufacturing leaders should focus in 2021.
Speaker: Simon Kozlov (AI & ML Lead, Instrumental)
Manufacturing executives are charged with adding AI to their processes, but that’s easier said than done. This session provides a practical framework that manufacturing leaders can use to evaluate proposed AI initiatives within their organization, built on over a decade of building and implementing these solutions.
Speaker: Cathy Ma (Head of Audience Development, Thomasnet.com)
In this session, Cathy Ma opens Thomasnet.com’s troves of industry data to share a high level recap on the major manufacturing challenges brought on my COVID-19 in 2020. She also describes the core coping strategies and key learnings that brands and manufacturers of all sizes have been prioritizing to keep lines running.
With over 1.2 million registered manufacturing professionals using Thomasnet.com® daily to discover suppliers and generate leads, Thomas is in a unique position to guide industry as it adapts to and navigates new challenges. In this session industry data will reveal:
The fastest-growing electronic and electrical products and services in North America to prepare your sales pipeline
COVID-19’s impacts on supply chains to help you mitigate procurement risks
Key reshoring and innovation trends from fellow manufacturers to inspire your 2021 growth strategy
Speaker: Kyle Wiens (CEO, iFixit)
In rapid-cycle, high volume consumer electronics products, repairability is rarely at the top of an engineer’s list of design considerations. Circularity and electronics recyclability expert Kyle Wiens makes the business case for why prioritizing repairability is good for business, and why you shouldn’t wait to incorporate repairability requirements into your designs.
Learn how you can reduce rework costs and improve consumer brand perception by making your products easy to repair and recycle.
Meet and network with peers from across engineering, manufacturing, and operations, and discover the newest manufacturing technology solutions. Sign up for our manufacturing summit today.
Kyle Wiens is the CEO of iFixit, the free repair manual. He’s dedicated his life to defeating the second law of thermodynamics, a battle fought in the courtroom as often as in the workshop. The Right to Repair campaign has, so far, successfully legalized cell phone unlocking and tractor repair. Kyle regularly speaks on design for repair, service documentation, and the environmental impact of manufacturing. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, Wired, Popular Mechanics, and the Wall Street Journal.
Anna-Katrina Shedletsky is the CEO and founder of Instrumental Inc., a manufacturing data company creating the first end-to-end optimization platform for product teams building electronic devices. Instrumental combines AI-powered defect and anomaly detection, failure analysis tools, complete issue monitoring and reporting, and production-quality in-line tests into a single end-to-end optimization platform.
Anna-Katrina holds two degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. Before founding Instrumental, she led system product design for the first-generation Apple Watch program, and contributed to several generations of iPod mechanical design.
Jeff Lutz has shipped over one billion consumer electronics devices globally in more than 150 countries worldwide. He currently is the Founder & CEO of Launch i/o, Inc. There, Jeff and his team are partnering w/Fortune 10 tech companies on supply chain design, Design For X, and totally rethinking product cost structure.
He was most recently Corporate Vice President, of Supply Chain, Head of New Products, & Chief Quality Officer at Motorola Mobility. During his 20+ year career at Motorola, Google, and Lenovo he delivered several groundbreaking firsts in the mobile industry such as the RAZR phone, the first Droid mobile phone, and the first android tablet & wearable devices.
At Build Better Jeff will talk about the real cost of misalignments in the supply chain and what practitioners can do to fix it.
Caitlin Kalinowski leads VR Hardware at Facebook and is passionate about empowering women in tech. She is a recognized leader in virtual reality and product design. In her current role, Caitlin is responsible for the product design and engineering of Oculus’s award-winning VR devices including Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift S. Before working at Oculus, she was a technical lead at Apple on the Mac Pro and MacBook Air lines, and was part of the original unibody Macbook Pro team. Caitlin received her BS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. Caitlin is also on the strategic board of Lesbians Who Tech & Allies, the largest LGBTQ technical organization in the world, serving 30,000 members.
Cathy Ma is the Head of Audience Development for Thomas, North America’s number one industrial sourcing and marketing platform. She is a former Wikipedia sociologist and an international growth leader with 15+ years of experience developing audience strategies across global organizations, such as Moody’s Analytics, Interbrand, and Yahoo!. Her recent research on COVID-19’s impacts on manufacturing was cited in Design News, EE Times, and McKinsey’s industry analysis.
Simon Kozlov is a Machine Learning engineer at Instrumental. Simon has been involved with all AI capabilities at Instrumental, currently leading the Machine Learning team to deliver the next generation of AI-driven tools.
Simon holds a masters degree in Physics from Novosibirsk State University – one of the highest rated engineering schools in Russia. He also teach a Deep Learning course at State Novosibirsk University. Simon previously work at the Machine Learning team at Dropbox.
Our manufacturing summit reaches hundreds of leaders across manufacturing.
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Give us 10 minutes, and we’ll give you an early peak at the trends defining electronics NPI programs in 2021. We’ll share the results with all attendees of our manufacturing summit.
