August 1, 2024 - Singapore
Join us at the Annual ARC Industry Forum Asia to speed up your digitalization, sustainability and energy transition initiatives with strategies and stories from your peers.
For industrial sectors, it is a time of uncertainty. Market disruption abounds, and change is inevitable. For companies that can make fast, effective decisions, change presents significant opportunity and not just existential risk. Industrial leaders deal with this by leveraging transformational technologies such as generative AI to evolve business models, focusing on competitive and operating excellence, anticipating changes to the workforce and work itself, establishing cyber-resilient operations, and driving energy transition and sustainability into core business strategies.
By embracing a digital-first mindset, companies can dismantle constraints that limit their capacity to quickly produce the correct goods and services for the marketplace. Through digitally-driven business agility, leaders succeed and grow, embracing goals of competitive excellence and revenue creation, while delivering production efficiency and operational excellence to protect margins. These companies are integrating digital technology, such as AI and cognitive analytics, digital twins, predictive technologies, and other technologies, throughout their value chains. Design and engineering, production operations, maintenance, logistics, supply chain, business systems, customers, products, and organizational structure are undergoing innovative change as companies adapt to increasingly dynamic market conditions. Leaders understand that attaining business agility, enabled by digital technologies, is critical to responsiveness, resilience, and competitive differentiation.
Technologies like digital twin, cloud, AI, edge computing, IoT, open automation, additive manufacturing, augmented reality, and more are enabling new business processes and obscuring traditional functional boundaries. OT, IT, and ET teams are growing their skills and capabilities, transforming real-time operations. Executives charged with driving transformation are seizing this moment to innovate and deliver value. Call it digital transformation, smart manufacturing, or Industry 4.0, industrial companies are unlocking business agility to better innovate, transform, and succeed in both the present and future.
Is your organization successfully evolving to be a digital organization?
Join us at the Annual ARC Industry Forum Asia, to learn more about how transforming factories, plants, and infrastructure will benefit technology end users and suppliers alike. Discover what your peers and industry leaders are doing today and what steps they are taking to prepare for the future.
Executive Speakers
The following executives are featured speakers at the Singapore Forum.
Clifton Phua
Director of Labs
Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA)
Clifton Phua is Director of Labs at Singapore's Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA). His primary focus is to explore and rapidly prototype with emerging digital technologies (e.g. AI, Trust, Robotics, Communications, Quantum, and Green Computing), to empower Singapore companies and workforce. With over 17 years of experience in data and AI, Clifton has a proven track record of delivering impactful solutions and insights for various industries and sectors. He was Chief Technology Officer of Digital Systems at ST Engineering, and also led the customer facing data scientist team in APAC at DataRobot, and the data scientist team at NCS.
Sharul Rashid
Head of Technical Excellence
Petronas
Sharul has more than 30 years of experience in handling instrumentation and control issues in oil & gas, gas liquefaction and petrochemical plants including pipeline transmission network. Sharul advises not only within his Group Technical Solution but also plant Petronas-wide on instrumentation and control issues. He is involved as an instrumentation expert in many key Petronas projects, e.g., Kertih Compressor Station, Peninsular Gas Utilization metering stations, and MLNG Satu Rejuvenation and MLNG Dua Debottlenecking. Sharul is the President of International Society of Automation (ISA), Malaysia Section. He is co-chair Certification Work-Group (CWG) of the Open Process Automation Forum (OPAF) and), Vice-Chair IASSC (Instrument Automation Standards Subcommittee) for IOGP, Vice-Chair Digital Connected Society (Malaysia) and co-Steering Committee member of JIP33 (IOGP) (International Oil & Gas Producer. Additionally, he is voting member for ISA-75 (Actuated Valve) and IEC TC/S/15 for Smart Manufacturing.
Murli Balsubramanian
Sr. Principal Instrumentation & Controls Engineer
ExxonMobil Asia Pacific
Murli is currently the Senior Principal I&C Engineer for ExxonMobil Technology and Engineering Company and serves as the Senior Advisor for all ExxonMobil businesses. With 35 years of experience in instrumentation and controls, he has worked in both Projects (pharmaceuticals, pure chemicals, fertilizers, refining and petrochemicals) and Operations support roles. He graduated with a B.E. in Electronics Engineering.
Milind
AI Scientist
Mercedes-Benz
Milind heads the AI product development and operations function at Mercedes-Benz for Region Overseas, covering more than 40 countries globally. With close to two decades of experience in business leadership and consulting roles, he has advised governments on policy and regulatory matters, worked with private companies on strategy and growth initiatives, been a core team member of a successful start-up, and has turned around a loss-making business. Milind also serves on the advisory board of the AI for Good Foundation.
Damodar Hegde
Head of Manufacturing Excellence, Bottling Investment Group
Coca-Cola
Damo’s work experience includes leadership and technology roles at leading FMCG companies such as Cola-Cola, Unilever and Procter & Gamble. He is always happy to share his learnings around sustainable supply chains, digital transformation, and people capabilities with other professionals and to connect to like-minded enthusiasts.
Arne Modersohn
Process Control Engineer & Member NAMUR-APL Task Force
Evonik
At the Germany-based specialty chemical company Evonik, which he joined in 2016, Arne’s main work areas are process plant engineering in global greenfield and brownfield environments, computer aided engineering, and digital technologies. As a current member of the NAMUR task force for the Ethernet Advanced Physical Layer (APL), he is contributing to the introduction of this new networking technology into practical applications. And in the NAMUR working group 1.3, he is part of the development of standardized data models to support the effort to digitize plant engineering processes and facilitate data exchange between vendors and plant operators.
Peter Morrison
Digital Science Principal
BP Singapore
Peter is the Digital Science Principal in the Asia Pacific region for the integrated energy company BP. He is part of a group charged with thought leadership, technology scouting and research, with a mission to bring frontier digital technology to the company. This wide remit covers activities in trading, shipping, hydrogen, wind, undersea operations, geophysics, and more. Peter's background is in software engineering, which he has pursued at several investment banks and trading organizations.
Forum Topics
- AI and Machine Learning
- Transforming to 21st Century Operations
- Energy Transition and Industrial Sustainability
- Asset Performance Management
- Automation Innovations
- Cybersecurity for Digitalization and Sustainability
- Digital Twins and Connected Smart Machines
- Digital Workforce and Culture
- Industrial IoT Platforms, Edge Infrastructure, and End Devices
- MES End User Success Stories
- Smart Infrastructure
Agenda
Following is the schedule for the Singapore Event sessions. Times and sessions are subject to change. All times are Singapore Standard Time (SST). Presentations will be made in English.
Thursday, August 1
| 8.00 | Registration and Breakfast at Level 4 Grand Ballroom Foyer |
| 9.00 | Welcome and Introduction by ARC Advisory Group |
| 9.10 | Keynote Address: Transforming the Industrial Sector with Agentic and Embodied AI Clifton Phua, Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) |
| 9.30 | Open Process Automation Forum |
| Productize, Certify and Deploy - Open Process Automation Sharul Rashid, Petronas | |
| Enabling OPA Adoption in Asia Pacific John Kirkman, Enterprise Transformation Partners | |
| Moving Open Process Automation to Commercial Reality Murli Balsubramanian, ExxonMobil Asia Pacific | |
| Panel Discussion with Speakers and Additional Panelists Onur Gurhan, Schneider Electric Mark Hammer, Yokogawa Mercy Zhang, SUPCON | |
| 11.00 | Morning Coffee Break and Exhibition Visit |
| 11.30 | Technologies for Transformation |
| Ethernet-APL: Digitalizing Field Networks in the Process Industry Arne Modersohn, Evonik | |
| Digitalisation of Instrument Maintenance and Enhancement of Maintenance Practices Leveraging AI and IIoT Bejoy Jose, Yokogawa | |
| The USB Connector to the Cloud: Listening to End Users Stefan Hoppe, OPC Foundation | |
| Panel Discussion with Speakers and Additional Panelists Jonas Berge, Emerson Nur Misuari, Hexagon | |
| 13.00 | Networking Lunch and Exhibition Visit |
| 14.00 | The Age of AI: Opportunities and Solutions for Industry |
| Supercharge Digital Transformation with Industrial AI Mercy Zhang, SUPCON | |
| Reinforcement Learning in Well Completion, an Industrial AI Use Case Peter Morrison, BP | |
| Harnessing Industrial AI with Built-in Domain Expertise for Autonomous Operation Goh JuayTong, AspenTech & RenJie New, Emerson | |
| Make a Friend for Life - Beyond Functionality, Building Emotional Connections Milind, Mercedes-Benz | |
| Panel Discussion with Speakers | |
| 16.00 | Afternoon Coffee Break and Exhibition Visit |
| 16.30 | Best Practices in Smart Manufacturing |
| Scaling Smart Operations Across Multiple Regional Plants Andy Yu, Schneider Electric | |
| Unlocking Peak Performance: EAM and APM for Data-Driven Decision Making in Smart Manufacturing Cedric Beltrame, Hexagon | |
| Why Smart Manufacturing Is Essential to a Sustainable Future Damador Hegde, Coca-Cola | |
| Panel Discussion with Speakers | |
| 18.00 | Closing Remarks |
| 18.15 | Evening Dinner and Networking Reception at Level 2 Riverfront Ballroom |
Location
The Singapore Forum is held at Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel.
Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel
392 Havelock Road
Singapore 169663
+65 6733 0880
