Auf Wiedersehen, Berlin

The impressive BME Symposium for Procurement and Logistics for 2016 has just concluded in Berlin. Among the many highlights, Siemens AG gave a presentation related to their experiences with Keelvar's Sourcing Optimization software entitled 'ESourcing 4,0'. Keelvar also attended as a conference partner and hosted a booth at the event and this post summarizes some of the conference highlights.

The opening keynotes had a strong political theme that was appropriate given that it coincided with the US election. Dr. Klaus von Dohnanyi, Former Mayor of Hamburg, gave a particularly powerful address that had the audience deeply engaged. His argument that businesses needed to take a strong stand in political debates to counteract populist waves of emotional arguments that ultimately damaged long term interests for all of society.

Other particularly compelling presentations came from Airbus and Airbus Group CPO, Dr Klaus Richter and Dr. Bernd Martens of Audi AG who focused on transformation and the 'Factory 4.0' of the future. This chimed appropriately with Sebastian Kahlmeyer's talk entitled 'eSourcing 4.0: Leveraging smarter competition design using optimization capabilities'. It addressed the challenge of driving value generation in eSourcing to the next level and covered advanced eSourcing functionalities that relied on Keelvar software for market-making combined with state-of-the art optimization. Sebastian Kahlmeyer is the Senior Vice President, Supply Chain Architecture and Digitalization, Siemens AG, so we are honoured they have proudly spoken of their success using Keelvar.The BME Symposium enjoyed exemplary organization and expert speakers so it is unquestionably an event to include on the annual calendar. One of the unique aspects is that vendors don't present, instead customers give the presentation only. This certainly helps improve the calibre and objectivity of presentations.