Event Agenda

pre-event drinks - october 19

  • 5:30 - 7.00 PM

Join us for drinks at Somerset

We look forward to welcoming you for informal pre-event drinks where you can meet your peers in advance over a relaxed drink and food. Somerset – Where Flavors & Gold Coast Glamour meet. 1118 N State Street, Chicago, IL 60610

Summit Day 1 - october 20

Day 1

  • 8:15 AM

Arrival, Check-in & Networking

  • The Newberry Library

Day 1

  • 8:50 AM

Event Kick-Off

  • Main stage

Event Host: James Meads, Independent Advisor and Consultant

Day 1

  • 9:00 AM

From Sourcing to Growth - How AI and Automation Can Turn Direct Materials into a Source of Margin, Resilience, and Growth

  • Main stage

This session will examine the sequence required to build a modern direct procurement function: data quality, supplier and material visibility, system integration, process discipline, analytics, AI-enabled decision support, and stronger influence across supply chain, finance, operations, product and commercial planning

Shashi Mandapaty, Principal & Managing Director – Supply Chain & Procurement Advisory, Synapsys & former CPO, J&J

Day 1

  • 9:40 AM

What Your ERP Can't See: The Market Signals Driving Margin, Risk, and Production Continuity

  • Main stage

Your ERP is very good at telling you what you paid last quarter. It’s far less helpful at telling you what you’re about to pay—or whether the materials you’re counting on will actually arrive on schedule. That gap is where margin quietly disappears. Direct materials leaders today are managing tariff whiplash, supplier concentration, critical-input exposure, and executives who want forecasts to the decimal point—while still making sourcing decisions off backward-looking data and contracts that were “set and forget” the day they were signed. More automation won’t fix that. Automating a blind process just gets you to the wrong answer faster.

What changes the game is a market-informed operating model: historical price intelligence, volatility signals, forward-looking forecasts, and AI that actually interprets what the market is telling you. Used together, they surface the exposure hiding in your bill of materials, flag disruptions before they become line-down events, and let you lock in price certainty instead of hoping for it. Whether you’re buying metals, resins, electronics, packaging, or chemicals, the principle is the same.

This isn’t a cost-cutting pitch. It’s about continuity you can trust, forecasts you can defend, and margin that stops leaking out the back door.

If you’re still managing volatility by reacting to it, this session is for you.

Lisa Reisman, CEO, MetalMiner

Day 1

  • 10:15 AM

The Missing Layer Between Execution and Enterprise Outcomes

  • Main Stage

The execution problem starts before the technology does.

A decision can be functionally sound and still become expensive to execute when the assumptions, constraints and trade-offs behind it do not travel with it across the enterprise.

Performance can hold while margin absorbs the workaround, working capital absorbs the buffer, and capacity absorbs the unresolved trade-off.

As AI expands the data and intelligence shaping cost, capacity, resilience and margin, this session examines what Direct Procurement must make explicit before those consequences become embedded in execution.

Joselina Peralta, Founder & CEO, STRACTIX 

Day 1

  • 10:55 AM

Coffee Break + Live Demos

  • Demo Hub

Demo Hubs enable you to gather in packs and evaluate our vendors’ products and services – with live group demos, offering a unique opportunity to benchmark, critique and compare how peers might leverage the tech within their organizations.

     

Day 1

  • 11:55 AM

From 1887 to Agents: Why Procurement Finally Gets Its Autopilot

  • Main stage

The roles in today’s procurement org chart were defined for the railroads in 1887, and every wave of software since has left the hardest work, the “exception tax,” to people. Mathew Schulz, former procurement executive and Forrester analyst, talks with Fragment cofounder and CEO Pranav Mulgund about how AI agents now do that work in production, and what it means for your team.

Pranav Mulgund, CEO, Fragment

Day 1

  • 12:15 PM

What Good Looks Like: Technology that Actually Improves Direct Procurement Performance

  • Main stage

Case studies showing where technology is already improving sourcing, supplier performance, quote management, risk visibility, inventory decisions, supplier collaboration and everyday productivity

  • What we automated first: practical use cases direct procurement can steal
  • Practitioner-led case study showing where technology is already improving sourcing, supplier performance, quote management, risk visibility, inventory decisions, supplier collaboration and everyday productivity
  • What we automated first: practical use cases direct procurement can steal

Bhavik Pathak, Director & Head of Supplier Quality – Americas, Alstom

Amit Patel, Head of Supply Chain, Gimlet Labs

Moderator: Ian Silver, Head of Group, Samsung SDS America

Day 1

  • 12:45 PM

Networking Lunch

Day 1

  • 1:30 PM Choice of Breakout Sessions

Day 1

  • 1:30 - 2:35 PM

Track 1 - Supply Intelligence

  • Supplier Relationship Management is becoming critical infrastructure for direct procurement. This session explores how organizations can centralize supplier data, approved materials, certifications, communications, quote history and supplier rules so teams can make faster, safer and more consistent decisions

Sam Jenks, CRO, Kodiak Hub

Agentic AI works neatly in demonstrations built around clean digital workflows. Direct procurement is different. Supplier and material data is fragmented, suppliers still communicate through email, ERP records must be precisely right, and teams are managing purchasing activity at a scale humans cannot continuously monitor.

  • This session explores what actually has to be in place before AI agents can operate reliably across a physical supply chain — from supplier and material master data and ERP integration through to supplier communications, PO management and workflow execution. It will examine where agents can remove manual work today, where poor data and fragmented processes create risk, and how direct procurement teams can build the foundations for increasingly autonomous operations.

Lorenz Pallhuber, Co-Founder, Didero

Day 1

  • 1:30 - 2:35 PM

Track 2 – Cost & Demand

How direct procurement can strengthen the P&L and balance sheet—and create financial headroom for resilience and growth.

Procurement’s strategic influence grows when negotiated value becomes financial strength. This fireside explores how procurement can deliver more profit, release cash and help create the capacity to invest in resilience and growth. The discussion examines the “last mile” connecting sourcing decisions, procurement execution to P&L & Balance Sheet impact. Through practical direct-materials examples, the discussion will explore where value slips away, what it takes to realize it, and how agentic AI can help turn commercial commitments into verified outcomes.

Niranjan Umarane, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, Rivvun

Shashi Mandapaty, Former CPO, J&J

Most direct procurement AI initiatives don't fail on the technology — they fail on the foundation underneath it: fragmented supplier data, undefined governance boundaries, and operating models never built to scale AI beyond a pilot. This session takes a readiness-first view across four pressure points direct procurement leaders face today — strategic sourcing, procurement excellence, supplier management, and transformation — and asks the question most vendors skip: is your organization actually positioned to capture the value AI promises, or about to repeat the same friction at scale? Drawing on live diagnostic work and current industry practice at companies including PepsiCo, Schneider Electric, GM and Unilever, this talk offers a practical framework leaders can apply immediately: where to place human oversight as agentic tools take on more autonomy, how to sequence AI investment against sourcing and SRM priorities, and what "scaling responsibly" actually looks like operationally. 

Hemangi Tawade, Founder, ProcureSynth 

Day 1

  • 2:40 PM

Multi-Tier Visibility: Managing Critical Supplier Risk

  • Main stage
  • Many of the biggest supply risks sit below tier-one suppliers or inside low-spend materials that support high-value products
  • This session will explore how procurement teams can map deeper supply networks, identify fragile dependencies, use BOM and supplier data to expose revenue-critical risks, and prioritize mitigation where it matters most

Sandeep Dhar, Procurement, Supply Chain & Transformation Executive | Industry Advisor, former Johnson & Johnson

Kumar Selvam, Head of Global Supply Chain – Sourcing & Procurement, Woodstream Corp

Abhi Supekar, Senior Director, Global Supply Chain, Aeva

Moderator: Constantine Limberakis, Founder & President, Liberis Consulting

Day 1

  • 3:10 PM

Coffee & Live Demos

Join demos with:

Day 1

  • 3:45 - 4:30 PM

Workshop

This workshop will help leaders quantify the value of AI and automation across direct procurement. It will cover ROI levers including material cost reduction, sourcing cycle time, avoided disruption, inventory optimization, supplier performance, engineering time, working capital, margin protection and production continuity.

Spencer Traver, Marketing & RevOps Leader, Sustainment

Day 1

  • 4:00 PM

Inside the Buyer’s Mind (Vendors Only)

  • Main stage

In this candid interactive session, procurement share what buyers actually want from tech partners and why many vendor pitches miss the mark. Benefit from expert practical insights, honest feedback, and actionable guidance on how to position your product around real business problems. 

  • Here’s what buyers wish vendors understood 
  • The disconnect, common frustrations 
  • What procurement really needs 
  • Vendor reframing 
  • Audience Q&A 

Host: Constantine Limberakis, Founder & President, Liberis Consulting 

Sandeep Dhar, Procurement, Supply Chain & Transformation Executive | Industry Advisor, former Johnson & Johnson

Rachel Hassall, Consultant 

Day 1

  • 4:30 PM

From Visibility to Action: Turning Supply Chain Data into Faster Procurement Decisions

  • Main stage

Procurement teams have more data than ever across suppliers, sourcing, demand, inventory, logistics and risk. The challenge is turning those signals into faster, better decisions.

This panel explores how manufacturing procurement and supply chain leaders are connecting data, analytics and AI to identify risk earlier, improve decision-making and move from reporting to action.

Discussion will explore:

  • Connecting sourcing, supplier, ERP, planning, inventory and logistics data
  • Using AI and analytics to surface where action is needed
  • Identifying supplier, capacity, material and demand risks earlier
  • Turning insight into faster sourcing, inventory and supplier decisions
  • Balancing AI recommendations with human judgement
  • Driving adoption across procurement, planning, operations and engineering
  • Measuring impact through faster decisions, fewer disruptions and stronger supply continuity

Mohit Bindra, Sr Director, Supply Chain, INFICON

Adam Paul, Head of Procurement, Analog Devices

Host: Spencer Penn, CEO and Founder, LightSource

Day 1

  • 5:00 PM

Building the End-to-End Operating System for Procurement Performance

  • Main stage

Technology and AI promise to transform direct procurement but technology alone rarely moves the needle. Drawing on more than 25 years of experience leading manufacturing and end-to-end supply chains, Mauricio Jamaica will explore why procurement needs to be viewed as part of a connected operating system rather than as a standalone function.

In this interview, Mauricio will share his perspective on the relationship between people, process and technology, why procurement performance is intrinsically linked to what happens upstream in planning and downstream in execution, and how leaders can create the foundations required for technology and AI to genuinely improve performance, customer satisfaction and profitability.

  • Why procurement cannot be viewed in isolation
  • People + Process + Technology: the foundations of transformation
  • Connecting procurement to the wider operating system
  • Diagnosing before digitising
  • Turning technology into measurable business value

Mauricio Jamaica, Supply Chain and Manufacturing Operations Executive | Creator of the Jamaica Operating System (JOS) | Author, Leading the System

Host: Omer Abdullah, Founder, Proquria

Day 1

  • 5:25 PM

Close of Day One & Drinks

Drinks Sponsor

Summit Day 2 - october 21

Day 2

  • 8:30 AM

Arrival, Breakfast & Networking

Day 2

  • 9:00 AM

Welcome to Day Two

  • Main Stage

Event Host: James Meads, Independent Advisor and Consultant

Day 2

  • 9:10 AM

Why Procurement Needs Better Processes Before Better Tools

  • Main stage

AI cannot compensate for poor process design. It accelerates and amplifies the workflows already in place, so organizations must fix bottlenecks, governance and human decision-making before expecting meaningful ROI. For direct procurement leaders this means looking hard at supplier onboarding, approval chains and sourcing decisions before automating any of them. Scott will use examples from recent client work to show where AI sped up a process, where the bottleneck moved, and what it took to fix it.

Scott Weiner, AI Lead, Fractional CTO, Fractional Chief AI Officer, Business Agility Strategist, NeuEon

Day 2

  • 9:45 AM

Decentralized by Design: How ProMach Is Building Shared Supplier Visibility and Scalable SRM Across 30+ Divisions

  • Main stage

ProMach designs, manufactures, integrates, and supports the most sophisticated and advanced packaging and processing solutions in the global marketplace. As a family of over 50 best-in-class brands, it serves manufacturers of all sizes and geographies in the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care, and household and industrial goods industries. Most of them were acquired, each with its own suppliers, buying habits, and systems. Its corporate strategic sourcing team was built to find leverage across that footprint without taking away the autonomy that makes the model work.

In this interview, Matt Kepner walks through what that has looked like in practice: what you only notice once you view the supply base from a global standpoint, how to negotiate corporate agreements across business units you don’t control, where the early wins came from, and the harder problem that follows a successful sourcing push: keeping dozens of contracts active, compliant and favorable long after they are signed.

  • Seeing the supply base globally, including what changed as ProMach expanded into Europe
  • Negotiating corporate agreements when you can’t mandate compliance or promise suppliers volume
  • Low-hanging fruit: where to start, and what Matt would do differently knowing what he knows now
  • Keeping contracts active and favorable after signature, and the point where manual tracking stops scaling
  • Where technology and AI can create shared visibility between a manufacturer and its suppliers, and where the process still depends on people

Matt Kepner, Director of Strategic Sourcing, ProMach 

Host: Phillip Pavelka, Enterprise Account Executive, Sustainment

Day 2

  • 10:15 AM

Beyond the Pilot: What Actually Happens When AI Lands in Your Procurement Organization

  • Main stage

This session looks at what actually happens once the AI tool is introduced into the day-to-day work of procurement teams: where it earned trust, where adoption stalled, what changed in practice, and what had to be adjusted along the way. What it took to move from “we bought this” to “this is now how we work.”

  • What was the original use case that justified the investment, and was it the one that ultimately stuck?
  • How did the team respond in month one vs. month six?
  • Where did adoption stall, and what helped move it forward?
  • What impact looked like in practice: time saved, spend influenced, decisions changed, or work reallocated
  • Tracking impact
  • The honest gap between what the vendor promised and what the tool delivers day to day?
  • What would I do differently if rolling this out again?

A practitioner-tested view of internal AI adoption in procurement, including the real sequence of decisions, setbacks, adjustments, and wins that happen after the pilot.

Mukesh Sharma, VP of Global Supply Chain, Xos Trucks

Chad Cutting, Sr. Presales Solution Architect & Consultant, Jaggaer

David Schultz, former CSCO 

Moderator: Bart Reekmans, Strategic Leader, Transformation Driver, Value Creator

Day 2

  • 10:50 AM

Coffee Break + Live Demos

  • Demo Hub

Demo Hubs enable you to gather in packs and evaluate our vendors’ products and services – with live group demos, offering a unique opportunity to benchmark, critique and compare how peers might leverage the tech within their organizations.

       

Day 2

  • 11:50 AM

What Does the Modern Cost-Modelling Stack Look Like?

  • Main stage

This session explores how direct procurement teams can move beyond static BOM and ERP data to build a more dynamic view of what parts and products should actually cost. We’ll look at how manufacturers are connecting BOMs, drawings, historical pricing and supplier quotes with external signals such as commodity indices, labour, energy and market movements to understand the true drivers behind cost changes.

The discussion will examine how this intelligence can help procurement identify where inflation is really hitting margin, challenge supplier pricing with greater confidence, prioritise the biggest cost opportunities and strengthen negotiations as well as where AI can accelerate the analysis and turn complex cost data into actionable sourcing decisions.

Blessen Kurian, Procurement Director – Digital and Data Science, Thermo Fisher Scientific

Johannes Groll, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, Tacto

Day 2

  • 12:10 AM

Supplier Risk & Resilience Modelling

  • Main stage

As supply chains become more complex and interconnected, organizations need a structured approach to identifying, assessing, and mitigating supplier risk. Effective supply risk management requires the alignment of governance, processes, technology, and data to provide visibility across the supplier ecosystem and enable faster, more informed decision-making. This panel will explore how leading organizations are strengthening supplier resilience through better risk monitoring, supplier onboarding controls, performance management, and the application of AI-enabled analytics. 

  • Improving supplier onboarding integrity through enhanced supplier validation, identity verification, and data quality controls. 
  • Leveraging AI and predictive analytics to identify emerging supplier, geopolitical, financial, and operational risks. 
  • Creating visibility beyond Tier 1 suppliers to uncover hidden vulnerabilities across the supply network. 
  • The evolving role of procurement in building resilient supply networks that support long-term business growth. 

The discussion will include perspectives from both procurement practitioners and technology providers, highlighting practical approaches organizations are using today to improve supplier resilience and reduce supply chain risk. 

Leader: Dave Stowe, MD, Adventus Consulting  

Fabio Cappuccio, Purchasing Director, National Tube Supply Co  

Gaurav Choudhary, Founder, Silicon & Steel & Staff Global Sourcing & Supply Manager, Electro-Mechanicals, Lucid Motors

Dr Nikita Hill, North American Purchasing Director, TUA – Global Commodity Director MRO, Albéa

Day 2

  • 12:40 PM

Networking Lunch

Day 2

  • 1:30 PM

From Data to Decisions: Building the Analytics Foundation for Better Sourcing & Risk Management

  • Main stage

Direct procurement teams are surrounded by data but having more data does not automatically lead to better decisions. This discussion explores how procurement can build the right data and analytics foundation to improve sourcing decisions, identify risk earlier and make AI genuinely useful.

  • From data to decision: how analytics can help procurement move beyond reporting toward better sourcing, risk and supply decisions
  • Getting the foundations right: supplier and material master data, hierarchies, ownership and governance and what happens when those foundations are unreliable
  • Connecting the signals: bringing together supplier, spend, performance, risk, commodity and operational data
  • Scenario-led decision-making: using analytics to evaluate sourcing options, supplier constraints, cost changes and risk scenarios before decisions are made
  • Preparing for AI and where organisations may be overcomplicating data readiness
  • Measuring the outcome

Juan Cortes, Global Director Procurement & Contract Manufacturing, Cook Medical

Peter Roman, Director of Global Sourcing, NSI Industries

Amal Bhatt, Sourcing Leader, Lam Research

Moderator: Paul Martyn, Partner, Supply Chain Best Practices

Day 2

  • 2:00 PM

From Strategy to Adoption: Making Change Stick

  • Main stage

The hardest part of AI adoption is getting people, teams, suppliers, IT, legal, security, and leadership aligned enough to use it with confidence. This wrap-up panel focuses on the human side of AI transformation in procurement: how to prepare the organization, reduce resistance, build trust, and move from isolated experimentation to embedded ways of working.

  • Why pilots fail even when the technology performs well
  • How to identify and address stakeholder resistance early
  • What category managers need in order to feel confident using AI
  • How to train teams without overwhelming them or reducing adoption to a one-off workshop
  • How to bring suppliers into AI-enabled procurement processes
  • What IT, security, legal, and data teams need before they will approve wider rollout
  • How to move from experimentation to embedded workflows
  • How to measure adoption, confidence, behaviour change, and usage, not just ROI
  • What leaders should do on Monday morning to build change readiness

Dr. Charlotte de Brabandt, Chair, ISM Thought Leadership Council

Tamra Pawloski, Managing Director, Procurement Strategy, American Airlines 

Day 2

  • 2:30 PM

Discussion Roundtables

  1. What should and shouldn’t be automated in procurement? 
  2. RPA & Copilots & Agents… Oh My!! 
  3. From AI Pilots to Procurement Impact: Where Can AI Actually Change the Way Procurement and Execution Works? 

Day 2

  • 3:15 PM

Close and Thanks!

  • Main stage

Event Host: James Meads, Independent Advisor and Consultant

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Testimonials

WHAT DO PAST ATTENDEES THINK OF THE EVENT?

    "It was an awesome gathering. Never been around so many IT Procurement Professionals from the buy side that shared best practices."

      "What a great opportunity to meet, engage, and learn both from and with Procurement colleagues from a wide range of backgrounds!"

        "An exceptionally valuable event; speakers and breakout sessions were exceptional and the hallway conversations alone were worth multiples of the cost."

          "It was an amazing conference and I’ve already been able to successfully put some of the negotiation tips and tricks into use. Thank you!"

            "The concentration of specialized expertise and experience was overwhelming, so much to learn from those in the room. I can’t wait to dive in again next year!"