Business Day

Session Title

Driving Global Consistency and Speed with CLM: Sidel’s Quoting Transformation

Sidel, a global leader in packaging equipment and services with more than 40,000 machines installed across 190+ countries, is transforming its quoting process from slow, fragmented tools into a scalable, globally aligned configuration system enabled through a Configuration Lifecycle Management (CLM) approach.

In this session, Andrea Pancirolli, Director of the Equipment Quotation Transformation Project, outlines how Sidel addressed key challenges: disconnected configuration and quoting processes, and misalignment between Sales, Engineering, and Manufacturing. By implementing Configit Ace as a shared source of truth and enabling end-to-end integration, Sidel has created a more unified and responsive configuration environment.

The transformation is already improving quoting speed, performance and scalability while establishing a strong data foundation for product variability and platform strategies. At the same time, Sidel is enabling regional autonomy with global consistency, supporting better customer understanding and value-based pricing, and demonstrating a structured approach to modernizing complex quoting and configuration environments.

About the Speaker

Andrea Pancirolli

Andrea Pancirolli is Director of the Equipment Quotation Transformation Project at Sidel, where he focuses on driving operational excellence and efficiency across complex engineering and project environments. With over a decade of experience at Sidel and GEBO CERMEX, Andrea has held roles spanning installation management, logistics, and project execution for large-scale industrial systems. His background combines hands-on expertise in installation and integration projects with a strong focus on continuous improvement and process optimization. He holds a degree from Politecnico di Milano.

Session Title

Mastering Customization Complexity: CLM as the Data Foundation for AI-Driven Growth

Customization is no longer a differentiator – it is the baseline. Yet many companies still manage product knowledge across silos: spreadsheets, legacy systems, documents, and local “truths.” The result is predictable: version drift, inconsistent metadata, rework, and slow handovers from engineering to sales and operations.

In this keynote, Dr. Wilhelm ‘Wil’ Bielert, CDO & SVP at Premier Tech, offers a bird’s-eye view on why Configuration Lifecycle Management (CLM) has become a strategic capability. His central thesis: mastering customization complexity requires a seamless end-to-end IT architecture, and CLM is the backbone – governing the solution space as a shared source of truth and enabling integrations across PLM/CAD, CPQ/CRM, and downstream execution.

Looking ahead, Wil connects CLM to digital threads as the bridge from governed configuration knowledge to scalable automation. He highlights how data fidelity, traceability, and governance across configuration, product, and process threads enable advanced AI, including agent-based support in manufacturing and operations. Where modern 3D/visualization platforms are part of the stack, they can accelerate this journey turning customization complexity into faster change, higher consistency, and sustainable growth.

About the Speaker

Wilhelm Bielert

Wilhelm Bielert is CDO and Senior Vice-President at Premier Tech and a recognized thought leader in digital transformation and Configuration Lifecycle Management (CLM). He focuses on enabling scalable customization and AI-driven operations through integrated digital architectures, including digital twins and simulation. He is the co-author of The Secrets of AI Value Creation (Wiley, 2024).

Session Title

From Customization to Resilience: Building an End-to-End Digital Thread with CLM

As industrial companies embrace mass customization, complexity has become structural. Products are increasingly configurable, software-driven, and globally sourced – yet product data and configuration logic remain fragmented across PLM, ERP, and service systems. What is missing is a continuous digital thread that connects configuration decisions across the lifecycle. While organizations can describe what could be built, many still lack a trusted, end-to-end view of what is actually inside a specific product instance.

This gap limits scalable growth and becomes critical when conditions change. Recent supply disruptions showed how quickly constrained parts or critical raw materials force manufacturers to answer a simple but urgent question: what can we still build and deliver? Without an end-to-end digital configuration thread, the result is manual analysis, conservative decisions, delays, and unnecessary cost.

In this session, Rüdiger Stern, Managing Director at Accenture Industry X, positions resilience and sovereignty as key outcomes of mastering customization complexity, where cost, supply continuity, sustainability, and access to critical raw material are increasingly interconnected. Rüdiger will highlight how a Configuration Lifecycle Management (CLM) approach creates a consistent digital thread across design, manufacturing, service, and return. This allows companies to make confident build decisions under constraints, increases transparency, and supports circular-economy models by showing exactly what is in each returned product – helping recover critical raw material and manage future costs.

About the Speaker

Rüdiger Stern

Rüdiger Stern is Managing Director of Industry X at Accenture DACH. He brings extensive experience from previous roles at AssetMinder, the Society of Cost Engineers, FACTON, and Accenture. He studied at Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin from 1994 to 1998 and holds a Diploma degree in Physics (Dipl.-Ing.) with a focus on product development, test, and validation.

Session Title

AI Disruption in Manufacturing

AI is everywhere. In the headlines, in the boardroom, and increasingly on the factory floor.

And for good reasons!

It is not a question of whether AI will disrupt manufacturing, but a question of when and how.

For manufacturing executives, the challenge is making the right investment choices that will ensure that you are the disruptor and not the disrupted.

In this keynote, Damantha Boteju, CPTO at Configit, explores how C-level executives can navigate the current AI landscape. The keyword is “Trust”; trust that AI investments will deliver the outcomes needed and trust that the technology is reliable. AI can accelerate “time-to-prototype”, but what about “time-to-trust”?

AI alone cannot deliver time-to-trust. Not without ensuring that a reliable, end-to-end, connected data foundation is established first that can deliver the dependable data that AI needs to be trustworthy.

About the Speaker

Damantha Boteju

Damantha Boteju is chief product and technology officer at Configit, which he joined in March 2023, bringing over 25 years of expertise in software development with a focus on enterprise-class products. As CPTO, he leads the product and technology strategy, driving innovation, and delivering solutions that meet the complex needs of Configit’s global customers.

Session Title

One Configuration Truth – CNH’s CLM approach for Scalable Customization and Servitization

CNH is a global leader in equipment, technology, and services across Agriculture, Construction, and Financial Services. As complexity increased, CNH faced fragmented sales tools, manual configuration, inconsistent experiences, and rising dealer frustration across organizational siloes.

CNH began its Configuration Lifecycle Management (CLM) journey in 2012 with the CNH eQuipment configurator, expanding into offline sales, dealer pricing, and mobile applications. Over time, CLM evolved into a strategic backbone, standardizing configuration and pricing globally and delivering measurable value across departments.

Today, CNH is extending CLM beyond products into services. With a dedicated Services Configurator and structured authoring based on Configit Ace, integrated with CRM (Microsoft Dynamics) and ERP (SAP), CNH has established a shared source of truth across B2B and B2C channels – delivering value today while laying the foundation for a connected digital thread and future, AI-enabled use cases.

In this session, Alberto Russo, IT Project Manager at CNH, shows how CLM enables faster, error-free configuration, improves data quality, and drives dealer excellence and scalable servitization.

About the Speaker

Alberto Russo

Alberto Russo is an IT Project Manager at CNH, specializing in product definition and configuration. Alberto began his career in 2004 as a consultant and programmer supporting Iveco (then Fiat Industrial), where he worked for six years before joining CNH’s SAP implementation as a senior programmer. Since 2012, he has focused primarily on project management, leading initiatives at the intersection of IT, product configuration, and enterprise systems.

Session Title

Building a Scalable Configuration Backbone – The Vestas Approach

As a global leader in sustainable energy, Vestas operates at an unprecedented scale – managing highly complex products across Engineering, Sales, Operations and Service. The ability to provide configuration specific datasets, software and documentation is a core capability that Vestas has refined for over more than two decades – and still is.

At its center lies the “Configuration Workbench” (powered by Configit), acting as the central hub for managing and distributing configuration models to various consuming systems. This enables the utilization of configuration logic in local systems, whilst ensuring cross-domain integrity.

In this session, Peter à Porta, Product Owner for Configuration Management Systems at Vestas, shares how Vestas is evolving its configuration landscape within its enterprise-wide Configuration Lifecycle Management (CLM) approach. Furthermore, Peter will shed some light upon the most recent initiative of establishing and governing a “common language” to be used by all systems involved in configuration activities.

The “Global Characteristic Dictionary” (GCD) lays the foundation for consistent interpretation of configuration data and helps reduce errors caused by misalignment.

Join this session to learn how Vestas is combining governance, architecture and CLM to scale configuration and improve operational efficiency across the enterprise.

About the Speaker

Peter à Porta

Peter à Porta is Product Owner for Configuration Management Systems at Vestas, where he focuses on improving how products, data, and decisions flow across the organization. He has extensive experience leading complex change initiatives across production and product development, with expertise in areas such as engineering change management, PLM, product configuration, and master data management. Known for his practical and collaborative approach, Peter helps organizations reduce complexity and implement sustainable solutions to challenging business problems.

Session Title

Navigating AI Disruption in Manufacturing: the Path to Success

This panel explores the current state of AI in complex product environments, separating real impact from hype. It examines where AI is already creating value, how far we are from the “AI-enabled future,” and what needs to happen to get there.

Bringing together industry leaders, technology providers, and consulting experts, the discussion will focus on how organizations are turning complexity into opportunity. A key theme is the role of a strong data backbone, governance, and configuration foundations as the true differentiators, enabling companies to scale AI and drive competitive advantage.

Topics include:
• Where AI is already delivering real value, and where it is not
• The gap between today’s capabilities and the “AI-enabled” future
• Why data alone is not enough: the role of product logic and configuration
• How to establish a robust data backbone and governance across systems
• What it takes to turn product complexity into scalable growth and differentiation

Moderated by Damantha Boteju, Chief Product and Technology Officer (CPTO) at Configit, bringing deep expertise in product strategy and digital transformation.

Join industry leaders from Premier Tech, Vestas, PTC, and Accenture for a strategic panel discussion on advancing innovation across the manufacturing and technology landscape.