Björn Neal Kirchner has lead the Supply Chain Function of HARTMANN Group since January 2015. This includes global responsibility for demand, supply and inventory planning, logistics & warehousing activities, as well as customer order management and purchase-to-pay processes. Recently, his team has re-designed the demand planning process and is now rolling this out to the entire group. Ensuring that all local sales organisations are moving to more mature planning processes continues to be a challenge.

Mathijs is a driven Supply Chain professional with significant experience in the medical device industry: Combining pragmatism with diplomacy, bringing leadership and delivery capabilities to any project. Proven results in rapidly changing supply chain environments. Intellectual capacity and the “can-do” mind-set to develop lean organisations and improve supply chain performance, with a clear and pragmatic approach to the “service vs. cost” paradox.

Jenny is responsible for GS1 standards within Molnlycke Health Care and is actively working towards implementing the relevant processes within the company to ensure full compliancy with the standards when the new regulations come into force. She is an active participant within the GS1 Health Care User Group and the Eucomed ETF.

Ronald is responsible for order fulfillment and supply chain management in EMEA Emerging Markets (Eastern-Europe, Russia, Central-Asia, Middle-East and Africa). He leads a team of approximately 220 people in 15 different countries. Total revenue: $1.2B. Successes include channel conversions in Saudi Arabia: Transition from a distributor model to direct deliveries. Ronald finds it difficult to have meaningful multi-year strategic plans. Geopolitical challenges and oil price fluctuations make it hard to look beyond 12 months. Markets to be discussed in this workshop include Brazil, Russia, the Middle-East, India, China and Africa.

Guillaume has two main areas of responsibility: The first is the downstream supply chain for all single use medical devices. The second is the management of two development and manufacturing sites of Intra ocular lenses. The biggest success of her team in the last 6 months was the go-live of different e-commerce tools adapted to different customer segment: Mobile app, customer portal and EDI. Her biggest challenge is keeping an accurate and up-to-date understanding of workflow and jobs to be done at the customer side in order to design supply chain processes fulfilling customer needs.

Martin heads up the Project Management Office within Global Distribution, manages all Lean Six Sigma(LSS) activities from process design to continuous improvement and is responsible for warehouse design and supporting IT systems. One success story is the implementation of Pick by Voice with a warehouse management (WMS) pick manager and one major challenge is delivering on promise in a volatile environment at reduced costs.

Simon is currently responsible for demand and replenishment planning, logistics and distribution across Europe, Middle East and Africa. His recent successes are in continuing to deliver a global supply chain excellence programme. Current challenges include, evolving commercial business models, company integrations and ensuring we meet or exceed compliance requirements.

Jana Dallmann is Senior Manager for Supply Chain Processes & Logistics for single use medical devices at Carl Zeiss Meditec. Jana is in charge of global outbound logistics, projects for optimisation of order fulfilment processes and the development of e-commerce activities. Her biggest success over the last 6 months is the launch of a digital ordering platform for our customers and biggest challenge is guiding the supply chain through a digital transformation process and balancing increasing regulatory requirements with global harmonisation of processes.

-Nele is a Sr. Operations Manager, responsible for all operational departments at the St. Jude Medical European Distribution Center, including warehouse, value added services, reverse logistics and the support department. Distribution of medical devices is done from the EDC to all OUS (out of US) regions. Her biggest success over the past 6 months is the development, implementation and optimisation of a repack process at the St. Jude Medical European Distribution Center: Via this new process superficial damaged products can now be repacked in a controlled way, instead of being scrapped due to the superficial damage. Her biggest challenge is the continuous and efficient management of the day-to-day operational activities with late cut-off times for order entry with same day shipment requirements, taken into account the peak periods (low and high), early pick-up times for certain shipments and the various requirements of different countries and customers.

Peter’s has outstanding organisational decision making and follow through skills with a strong ability to oversee and manage multiple projects utilising diverse resources. He has over 10 years experience in strategic supply chains, logistics, business development, strategic planning and process development/improvement. His passion is to give a "customer satisfaction" twist to his company's important business processes.

COO of a start-up medical device manufacturer called QuaSpec and Former Director of Logistics and Distribution EMEA at KCI Medical, Anton is a highly qualified business executive with 21 years of experience, in information technology, ERP, Logistics, Services, Manufacturing Operations, Packaging and Quality. This session will be highly interactive with practical work through exercises and take home messages that you can implement in your day-to-day role.

Diana is responsible for managing the following areas: UDI, Eudamed, Animal By-Products, Software, Environmental groups and the internal market issues. Diana has a strong interest in regulatory topics as well as trade and healthcare policies. She was an active member of the European Health Parliament project where she worked with the 'economic dimension of healthcare' committee on development of the recommendations on the future of healthcare systems.

Hajo’s main responsibilities are the analysis and reporting of the usage of medical supplies and pharmaceuticals. The data are interpreted in close cooperation with the pharmacists and the specialists within the purchasing department and recommendations to the clinical users as well as to the management are derived. His biggest success has been the completion of a long overdue improvement of report content and his main challenges at the moment are two projects on data capture at the point of care and master data communication via GDSN.

Mike now spends most of his time on patient safety issues including supporting elements of the Falsified Medicines Directive with Member States. He also works for Europe’s largest coordinator of donated medical products. This established charity, International Health Partners, provides a professional service to enable healthcare companies and aid agencies to support patients around the world who cannot otherwise access the medicines and medical devices they need.

Doug is a Guru on networking, behavioural psychology and relationship management who has designed a specific session to help you improve relationships inside your SC organisation and with your external suppliers and partners.

Chris has extensive experience across end-to-end supply chain with specialisation in healthcare logistics. He has a deep international expertise, leading regional and global projects. Chris has a passion to deliver business results, alongside motivational and people development skills.

Main responsibilities: Responsible for the sales, marketing and consulting operations worldwide for Esker. Coordination of 10 direct subsidiaries in the Americas, Europe and Asia helping customers streamline their business processes by reducing or removing the need to use paper in their operations. 

Biggest success: Successful deployment of our sales orders automation solution for Saint Jude Medical across 20+ countries WW all in the Cloud. 

Biggest challenge: Coordinate teams from across the world to serve our global customers while keeping the healthy local touch that is making our company both efficient and personable to work with.

Managing partner and one of the founders of EyeOn. Graduated Econometrics at Tilburg University. Over 20 years of experience in analyzing, improving and changing planning processes. Responsible for improvement projects within Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Philips Health Care, GlaxoSmithKline, Össur, Stryker, Edwards LifeSciences, DSM, Astellas, St Jude Medical, Mediq, Allergan, Dräger Medical, ASML, TomTom, MSD Animal Health, NXP and Heineken. For a period of 3 years he was financial controller for the Audio and New Business within Philips Consumer Electronics. As chairman of the Life Science Network, he has worked with many companies within the Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices Industry.

Pieter’s personal drive is adding to a better world by helping people to develop their potential, companies to improve processes and business partners to develop. He has a wide range of experience in logistics business management roles, such as general management, control, logistics, solution selling, supply chain implementation, outsourcing and change management.

Joost Rongen graduated Econometrics and Business Economics at Tilburg University in The Netherlands and the Postgraduate program in Logistics Management Systems at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Joost gained broad practical experience when working at ASML and Philips in the area of operational Supply Chain management and Supply Chain planning process innovation. He is well experienced in bridging IT and business organizations and driving joint business-IT programs. In 2011, Joost joint EyeOn as Lead Senior Consultant, specialized in Forecasting and Integrated Business Management for Life Science and High Tech companies (e.g. Astellas, Amgen, Electrolux, Schneider Electric, Philips. Next to his annual series of guest lectures in Supply Chain Management at Tilburg University, Joost facilitates master classes and in-company training to Supply Chain and Financial Professionals.

Maximilian is Head of the Health Care & Life Science Division within LGI Logistics Group International GmbH, operating multiple warehouses and distribution sites for customers within the medical device and in vitro diagnostics industry. His main responsibility is the organisation of dynamic and efficient logistics and operations for customers and developing a service portfolio according to their needs. Prior to this employment Max worked at trans-o-flex ThermoMed, where he was responsible for the pharmaceutical sales division in Germany and was involved in building an ambient distribution network. This was one of his biggest successes during the last few years.

Main responsibilities: Adelin’s role is to strengthen the presence of Esker in the Benelux region and to help organizations eliminate paper and improve business processes by automating the flow of incoming and outgoing business documents with on-demand and on-premise document automation solutions. 

Biggest success over the past 6 months: With his latest projects, Adelin achieved in average a 90% processing time reduction with 40% lower costs whilst keeping 100% visibility throughout the order intake process and a higher customer satisfaction for his customers. 

Biggest challenge: Adelin’s biggest challenge is to help companies automate business processes and make paper-free a reality.

Mirko Müller is currently responsible for Transportation at Beckman Coulter covering EMEA in addition to international flow management. Current project include the optimization of the distribution channels throughout Europe, the design of new network solutions assuming we operate out of a single DC. Previously Mirko has been heading the Healthcare Division at TNT Express.