OEMs and suppliers are moving fast to expand their vehicle models and powertrain offerings in the US and North America, including to produce a greater variety of ICE, hybrid and electric vehicles. But they are also under competitive pressure to shorten development cycles and speed up model updates and changeovers in plants without compromising quality, safety or efficiency.

This session delves into the shared data, tools and manufacturing engineering strategies that can help teams and suppliers to collaborate in real time across departments to reduce development cycles, improve change management and quicken time to market – all whilst improving launch performance and manufacturing processes.    

Key focus areas:

• Integrating production and lineside processes into launch planning
• Ensuring launch and changeover speed do not compromise quality or safety
• Cross-functional execution to align launch goals and processes
• Leveraging real-time data, simulation and digital twins to reduce development and launch cycles 

Automotive manufacturers in the US and North America need to combine maximum innovation in vehicle technology and innovation with the highest level of production standardisation, simplification and efficiency. Even as vehicles become more complex, with the integration of new materials, software, sensors and electronics, unnecessary cost and waste must be driven out from every step and part, from reducing superfluous fasteners to ensure plant tooling utilisation is maximised.  

This session explores the need for tighter integration across departments and key stakeholders in the value chain, especially R&D and manufacturing engineering. Experts will share best practice and examples in design-for-manufacturing and design standardisation, sharing tools, technology and partnerships that holistically improve development and production planning.  

Key focus areas:

• Influencing design and engineering decisions that shape cost and manufacturability
• Simplifying part and tooling complexity for new and existing model programmes
• Strategies to reduce late engineering changes and quality escapes
• Data and tools to enhance product and manufacturing engineering in parallel 

This session will show how automotive manufacturers can transform plant systems from being databases of record into active ‘engines of action’. With insight from a career focused on digital transformation, Goodyear CIO Raman Mehta will discuss strategies to enable decision intelligence and faster decisions across industrial operations. From establishing a robust data governance across plants – including PLCs, edge, computer vision and cloud – to enabling agentic AI to diagnose issues, prioritise actions, and orchestrate responses with human-in-the-loop oversight.

Featuring examples of pilots, enhanced cybersecurity, and clear change-management practices, this will session will show how frontline teams at plants can co-develop solutions and adopt new workflows together with IT and digital leaders.

Join this session for important lessons and insights into:

• Turning production systems and MES into decision enablers that combine a connected knowledge graph of operations with agentic AI and human skills.
• Insights into pilots and where to start and priorities, including on improving quality, reducing scrap and resolving errors faster. 
• The critical enablers of decision intelligence in manufacturing, including edge/cloud architecture, master data, cybersecurity, and strong change management.

This presentation will explore how manufacturers can create a connected digital representation across design, commissioning, production and maintenance, moving from engineering data in CAD, point-cloud and kinematic models through to hardware-in-the-loop simulation, equipment-state data and IIoT condition monitoring.

Delegates will learn how these combined models can support virtual commissioning, predictive maintenance, production-flow optimisation, quality validation and faster manufacturing decisions. 

Rajeev will also address some of the key challenges around interoperability, brownfield equipment, skills and cybersecurity.

Key takeaways:

• The core modelling layers that form a manufacturing digital twin
• Connecting engineering and simulation models with real-time production data
• Practical use cases across virtual commissioning, quality, maintenance and production flow
• Why integrated models deliver more value than isolated digital tools
• Key barriers to implementation, including interoperability, legacy equipment, skills and cybersecurity

• Connecting engineering models with real-time production, equipment and quality data
• Building trusted data governance and interoperable IT/OT foundations across plants
• Using digital twins for virtual validation, commissioning and production optimisation
• Scaling analytics and AI from individual pilots to repeatable manufacturing capabilities

Automotive manufacturing requires more advanced equipment and robotics to stay competitive, however investments are under scrutiny to deliver measurable ROI in good time. This session focuses on exciting but practical deployments of tools such as computer vision and visual inspection, precision measurement as well as flexible automation across production and logistics. Together, these systems and technologies can help OEMs to deliver productivity and manage higher levels of complexity, electronics and software.

Manufacturing and automation experts will share insights into use cases that deliver the best results, from visions systems that measure tolerances, reduce errors and detect defects, to the autonomous equipment and cobots that can support workers to operate faster, reduce risk and add more value. Learn more about the steps that can also speed up implementation, from reducing software variation, improving training and preventive maintenance considerations. Experts will also look ahead: to the exciting and stunning advances in areas of physical AI and understanding where it can be applied today and in the future.  

Key focus areas:

• Automation with scale and ROI potential today, including flexible robotics, autonomous material flow and cobots
• Opportunities and use cases in computer vision and visual inspection systems  
• Implementation and standardisation strategies  
• Next generation: the potential and pitfalls for physical AI and humanoids 

Even as factories become more automated, data and AI-driven, automotive manufacturers increasingly recognise that they must support their most important assets: its people, equally from senior leaders, engineers and planners to those on the assembly and shopfloor. This session will explore ways to ensure that people work more safely and deliver more value and innovation, including enhancing technical capabilities and embracing new technology.

Leaders will discuss strategies to support, train and reskill workers, including how to capture institutional knowledge amongst an ageing workforce, whilst enabling teams to work confidently alongside AI and automation.

Key focus areas:

• Upskilling for digital and automated environments
• Ensuring technology and data supports objectives  
• Human-machine collaboration on the shopfloor
• Knowledge retention amid workforce turnover 

Gain more understanding and confidence in facing what is ahead. The North American automotive manufacturing landscape is undergoing its most significant transformation in decades, with fast changes in costs, regulation, electrification and trade policy all set to reshape competitive dynamics across the region. However, investment and localisation of production is set to rise further, with the implementation of new technologies essential to stay competitive.  

This exclusive session delivers analysis and forecasts of the US and broader North American automotive manufacturing in the years ahead. Learn where investment is likely to flow, and how OEMs and suppliers will navigate an increasingly complex and fast-moving competitive landscape, and what strategic decisions made today will determine who is best positioned for the decade ahead.

Key focus areas:

• Tracking the changing shape of North American production, including investment, platform and localisation decisions
• Impacts of trade, cost and geopolitics on automotive manufacturing
• Where electrification is heading in the region
• The competitive shifts and players that will redefine the landscape across the 2030s