Breakout Sessions - SWOT Summit. Online registration by Cvent

To open the SWOT Summit, we’re bringing you a session that turns the traditional keynote speech upside down. In an “UnConference", there is no keynote speaker or panel; instead, we’ll tap into the expertise of everyone in the room. Facilitated by strategy and innovation firm Phillips & Co. (Chicago), you’ll get to connect with other attendees, learning from their insights and sharing your perspectives. Through this high energy session, you’ll make new connections, hear about the experiences of others in the KCMN network, and dive into real world challenges and solutions for today’s world of manufacturing. Designed for introverts and extroverts alike, you'll connect with each other in small groups, as we elevate the best ideas for all to learn from.

Are you working "on" your business, or "in" it? Every leader should ask that question as well as understand what the answer means for their strategy. Do we have the right strategy? Do we have the right goals? Do we have the wherewithal to execute and actually achieve them? Those are the questions of working on the business, and SWOT 101 is where that work starts.

This session lays the foundation: what strategy deployment actually is, and how a real SWOT — Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats — feeds directly into it, rather than sitting in a binder afterward. We'll walk through the inputs, outputs, and process of strategy deployment, the tools and techniques that make it repeatable, and the cultural elements that determine whether it actually sticks. Whether you're building a strategic planning process for the first time or want a sharper way to connect your SWOT to what actually gets executed, this session gives you a framework to take straight back to your team.

The strongest organizations are not just good at reacting to change. They are intentionally designed to handle it. The Executive Roundtable, facilitated by Phillips & Co., will bring senior leaders together for candid conversations about three areas where leadership choices have an outsized impact: building flexibility to respond to changing demand, getting decisions from the boardroom to the floor with speed and clarity, and maintaining strong customer relationships in an increasingly technology-driven environment. Come ready to compare notes on what is working and where leaders can intentionally invest today.

Expanding a manufacturing footprint touches more decisions than most leadership teams plan for — where to locate, how to engineer the site, what to build, and how to make the finished facility actually perform. This panel follows that full arc through four practitioners who each own a different stage of it: Tom Witty (Strategic Relocation Services) on site selection and incentive strategy, Darron Ammann (Bartlett & West) on civil engineering and site development, Brian Jones (PARIC) on design-build construction, and Steve Holland (McEnery Automation) on automating the finished facility for productivity. For executives and decision-makers weighing a move, an expansion, or a new build, this session offers a realistic, sequenced look at what the journey actually requires — and where companies most often stumble.

In this fast-paced interactive session, we will craft detailed financial projections in real time, “crowdsourcing” estimates for sales, profit margins, labor, operating expenses and more for an example business. The projections will then provide pro forma P/Ls, balance sheets, cash flow statements and financial ratios – all the data a lender or investor would need to see – and all in less than an hour! Participants will gain an understanding of the metrics by which their projections are judged and will have the example projections and a resource for the blank sheets and “how to use” videos.”

Your best operator is your biggest single point of failure. In most shops, the knowledge that runs the floor — how the job gets set up, which jobs to quote, which customer requirements will bite you — lives in a few heads, undocumented and unverified. When it walks out, you lose capacity, repeat the same corrective actions, and can't prove competence to a customer who's asking. This working session diagnoses where your shop's knowledge is trapped and what it costs. Leave with a one-page self-score. For owners, GMs, plant and quality managers.

Most manufacturing marketing doesn't fail on bad vendors or channels. It fails because there's no strategy behind it. Ben Wiese breaks down the three marketing leaks he sees in almost every manufacturer, and a simple, in-order process to fix them, so marketing stops being a gamble and starts driving growth. For owners, GMs, and sales & marketing leaders, especially anyone who has spent real money on marketing and couldn't point to what it returned. If your growth has plateaued on word of mouth and you're trying to reach the next level, this one's for you.