Eddie Smith

Director, Operations
Kuhn Krause

Eddie Smith has over 40 years in a variety of industries and held numerous high-level management positions, including Manager of Quality Assurance, Director of Quality Assurance, Manager of Manufacturing, Manager of Operations and Director of Operations. He has experience in automotive, off-road wheel manufacturing, gas and oil, construction and agriculture. He is a strong proponent of LEAN and has employed this approach to drive changes. Under his leadership in 2013 the Wichita, KS Case New Holland Construction Plant received the Best Plant Award from IndustryWeek for their application of LEAN. Eddie currently holds the position as Director of Operations at Kuhn Krause a manufacturer of agriculture equipment which are distributed globally. Through his direction Kuhn Krause has incorporated the use of LEAN Principles and Machine Intelligence. Kuhn Krause has been on their journey of continuous improvement for the past 3 years which is moving them toward a world-class manufacturing facility.

11:20 AM Panel Mergers & Acquisitions: Achieving The Goal Of Process Standardization

The digitalization of the manufacturing floor is not an easy task to begin with, but you are in double-trouble if your organization just got bought out or is in the process of acquiring another company – it inevitably adds to the complexity of transformation challenges and creates extra steps to climb on your path to Industry 4.0 success.

Join our panelists for a walk-through of their recent M&A lessons learned and unanticipated things you probably haven’t yet considered but should be on the lookout for. Hands-on recommendations focus on:

- Succeeding in undergoing a significant infrastructure change and achieving systems interoperability across all facilities

- Driving the universal adoption of Industry 4.0 strategy and cultural change across all locations

- Making sure your cross-functional teams can clearly communicate across the globe

- Warranting regulatory compliance throughout the M&A process

Check out the incredible speaker line-up to see who will be joining Eddie.

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