Global Speakers

Jeffrey is an experienced senior business executive and supply chain management professional with over 25 years commercial experience in leading supply chain and logistics strategy, operations and business transformation programs for companies operating complex international and national supply chain, procurement, logistics and transport operations

Prior to joining KPMG, Jeffrey held a number of senior executive general management and supply chain management positions in medium and large national and international companies in Asia Pacific, Japan, United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. He has extensive global supply chain, procurement and logistics management and operations experience and more recently worked with companies such as Westfarmers, Woolworths, SAB Miller, 7 Eleven, Metcash, Sainsbury (UK), Shoprite (SA) and Fonterra and third party logistics service providers such as DHL, Linfox, Star Track Express and Swire Group on a range of supply chain and logistics strategy and optimisation programs.

David Brimacombe has more than 35 year blend of Operational, IT, Management, Supply Chain and Professional Services consulting experience, and Project Management and deployment experience in many Supply Chain system implementations, across a broad spectrum of industries.

David Brimacombe has 7 years with international specialty chemical manufacturer (IT Manager encompassing operations in 5 countries)as well as 11 years Applications & Logistics Consultant with European (Supply Chain Planning & Execution Systems) Software House.

David Brimacombe is the Founder and sole Director of a Business, IT and Supply Chain optimisation consulting firm, and a respected consultant and business strategist, with many household names as clients to his credit within his portfolio. David Brimacombe is the Founder of BizOpt Solutions, a boutique Business Systems and Supply Chain Optimisation consulting firm which was profitable from the first month, and is now into its 8th year of operations

Nathan Gower is an Enterprise Account Executive at Dell Boomi APJ, a business unit of Dell specialising in application Integration, API management, Master Data Management (MDM) and low code Business Process Management (BPM).

With over sixteen years’ experience in the Information Technology industry and more specifically over ten years in the field of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Nathan joined Dell Boomi in June, 2016.

Nathan works with customers to help them overcome complex business challenges around digital transformation, ERP replacements, and the move from systems of records to systems of innovation. He can help articulate solutions to the hybrid IT infrastructure landscape many businesses find themselves in. Nathan has already helped solve many of the integration challenges for customers that have accelerated their journey from a system of record to systems of innovation.

Dell Boomi is a unique product offering in the market being the only true SaaS product which addresses Integration, EDI, Master Data Management, API Management and Business Process Management on a single platform.

Before joining Dell Boomi, Nathan was an Enterprise Account Executive for NetSuite specialising in the retail sector, designing solutions to integrate businesses from supply chain through to point of sale and business intelligence.

Roger Lawrence is a passionate traveller and professional geek in that order. He’s combining these interests as the founder of Vice Versa Reality: A virtual reality start-up that seeks to empower individuals and organisations to gain “Global Access to Universal Knowledge.”

Roger is old enough to have programmed mainframe computers, and travelled enough to have worked on complex IT systems in over 22 cities on four continents. Over the last five years he was CTO for Innovation at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise across Asia-Pacific & Japan, and has seen a thing or two about the impact of technology working well (& vice versa.) He’s also slept his fair share of nights in an economy airliner seat.

He’s a popular speaker, who holds both the lowest and highest recorded speaker scores at Microsoft TechEd. Of course, as a CTO, and thought leader in innovation, his audiences have ranged from cynical engineers to sceptical executives. Sometimes both simultaneously. But little compares to when he was Manager for Developer Evangelism at Microsoft. During the Vista years.

In almost 30 years of a profession you’re going to acquire a bit of experience. And frankly if you’re building an AR/VR start-up that is literally reengineering the way we connect to information, every little bit of architecture, programming, design, project management, sales, consulting, team leadership and marketing is going to come in handy.

Roger will walk, sail, and fly, but his favourite mode of transport currently is his adventure motorcycle. He’s also a stand-up comic with a whopping 2 gigs to his name, but as a husband of 22 years with four daughters, has plenty of material to work on.

Bryan Cook is Director, Operations at KPMG, Australia and joined KPMG from the World Bank Group where he was Chief of Procurement. Bryan has over 25 years of professional experience in Supply Chain Management, Procurement, Contracts and Logistics. He obtained his MBA from Durham University, UK and Honors Degree from the University Wales, UK. Bryan is the first qualified Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (FCIPS) in Australia, Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (FCILT) and Member of the Australian Institute of Project Management (MAIPM).

Prior to joining the World Bank Group, Bryan was the Strategic Procurement Manager for Chevron Australia Pty Ltd which was the central supply chain department working in support the Gorgon US$53bn Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) project and the start of the Wheatstone US$20bn LNG project. Bryan was Regional Chief Procurement Officer of United Nations Development Program (UNDP) for Asia Pacific based in Bangkok, Thailand and set up the regional procurement office for the Asia Pacific region.

He joined the Asian Development Bank, Manila in 2005 as Head of Procurement and Contracting and was responsible for introducing new procedures, systems and organizational change. In 2001 he was appointed Head of Business Services of Brunei Shell Petroleum where he was responsible for the organization’s finance, contracts, procurement, inventory and electronic procurement program.

After leaving the British Army, where he began his career, as Captain with the Queen’s Gurkha Engineers (QGE) in Hong Kong and Nepal, Bryan spent 12 years as Director and Senior Regional Representative East Africa and South East Asia for Charles Kendall and Partners Ltd as procurement agent and consultant for major donors such as the Department for International Development, UK, World Bank Group, EU and UN.

He has worked in USA, Australia, UK, Hong Kong, Nepal, Brunei, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, Malaysia, Philippines, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania in both international professional supply chain roles.

Dr Jie has graduated his doctorate study from The University of Sydney in 2008. His PhD thesis is Supply Chain Analysis in the Australian Beef Industry. Currently Dr Jie is an Associate Professor at School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University. Previously, he was a Senior Lecturer and taking a program coordinator role in Logistics and Supply Chain Management (LSCM) at RMIT University. He is managing and coordinating the undergraduate program in LSCM. Dr Jie joined RMIT in 2010. Dr Jie has maintained a high quality of research throughout his academic career including international scholarly leadership in the areas of supply chain management and logistics, including being invited to be keynote speaker and to give public lectures at symposiums and international conferences in Indonesia, Malaysia, China and Australia. In addition to being an editorial board member and referee for national and international journals to examine higher-degree theses, in the last five years, Dr Jie has published 20 refereed leading international journals (four articles in A ranked Australian Business Dean Council (ABDC) Journal ranking system) and 33 refereed conference papers. In addition, Dr Jie has received research grants/awards to the amount of $93,604.07 between 2010 and 2014. Dr Jie received the 2014 Endeavour Research Fellowship Award (to conduct a research project in Indonesia for 4 months (Project title is Indonesia Dairy Supply Chain Management). In addition, Dr Jie is supervising six PhD students in LSCM areas with six PhD students successfully completing from 2014 to 2016.

Dr Jie has professional and community engagement activities to contribute significantly to improve the university’s reputation through contribution to the wider community. They are: Active Participation in Professional or Governmental Organisations at the Local, State, National, or International level; Professional Engagement, e.g. member of Supply Chain and Logistics Association of Australia (SCLAA), Chartered Institute Purchasing and Supply in Australia (CIPSA), Project Management Institute (PMI); Supply Chain Indonesia Association; Media Star (speaking to national/international participants, professional agency, including international guest lecturer at universities). In addition, Dr Jie has engaged with several Indonesia public universities located in Java, Sumatera and Jakarta).

Jeffrey is an innovative and out-of-the-box thinking engineer. After completing his undergraduate Aerospace Engineering degree, he developed a career in Automation across various industries with a focus on always building a strong business case for improvement. He has developed strong abilities in the analysis, design and deployment of Automated Warehouses and has gone on to complete a Masters in Engineering Management (with a focus on supply chain and operations management). Recently finishing up a stint with Dematic (A global integrated warehouse systems provider), he is now dedicated to providing independent support and expertise for companies looking to develop the fulfilment centres of the future. Jeffrey strongly believes that creating the ultimate customer experience is a key to maintaining a competitive edge and is passionate about helping to shape the future supply chain using technology and data.

Joe has over 25 years’ experience in Freight Forwarding, Logistics and Domestic Transport. He is experienced in International freight, local transport, warehousing and materials handling. In his current role at DB Schenker, he is in charge of the Operation Excellence of 250,000 sqm of warehousing across, 5 warehouse management systems, 300 staff, and 10 major accounts. He has a Bachelor of Business, and Master’s Degree in Logistics from Sydney University and he is also a guest lecturer in logistics at the WSU, (Western Sydney University)

Karl Friesenbichler, a native Austrian, has worked and lived extensively throughout the world. Karl found his passion in the automation industry and has worked in it for 15 years. Karl is an energetic, enthusiastic person, and entrepreneur at heart, who understands the associated risks and impacts changes within the supply chain can have on business operations.

Karl is leading the SSI SCHAEFER Integration and IT department in Australia and has delivered turn-key logistical warehouse management solutions critical to the success of clients and SSI SCHAEFER in Australia.

The founder of Logistics Executive Group, Kim brings 35 years of executive leadership experience spanning Corporate Advisory, M&A, Trade Facilitation, Executive Coaching & Development, Executive Search, Recruitment and Outplacement across the Supply Chain, Aviation, Maritime, E-Commerce, F&B, Logistics, 3PL, Pharma, Industrial, FMCG and Retail sectors.

Commencing operations in 1999, Logistics Executive Group serves customers from offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Dubai and London. A professional Master of Ceremonies and Conference Chair, Kim holds an MBA, BA (NZ), is an ex professional rugby layer, board member for a dozen companies and Founder / Chairman of Australian registered (2006) charity Oasis Africa Australia HYPERLINK “http://www.oasisafrica.org.au” www.oasisafrica.org.au which provides freedom from poverty through education (8000 orphaned children to date) in African slums.

Kyle is young & ambitious individual from Ireland. Kyle obtained a first-class honours degree in Transportation & logistics with a diploma in professional practice. Kyle spent the first 8 years of his career working for his family’s Haulage & Production business.

After university Kyle spent some time travelling and settled in Melbourne and now works for efm logistics. Efm logistics is the largest 4th party logistics company in Australia who are a market leader in IT and pride themselves on being a true partnership for their customer’s domestic freight requirements.

Kyle has a strong interest in future technologies with the supply chain such as RFID, Driverless Trucks & the use of Drones for commercial use. Kyle is always keen to learn more about logistics industry and thus thrives on making new and meaningful connections as he continues to build his network in his new home of Australia.

Michael is a Chartered Professional Engineer and Fellow of Engineers Australia with over 20 years’ experience across industrial design, materials handling, manufacturing, food & beverage, mining, oil & gas, and has lead several international engineering teams and projects. He received a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) with First Class Honours in 1994 and a PhD in Mechatronics Engineering in 2002, both from the University of Queensland, and holds further qualifications in IT, Computer Graphics and Animation.

As a young engineer, Michael was Australian Young Professional Engineer of the Year in 1999, three times finalist in the Young Australian of the Year Awards and chaired the Young Engineers Australia National Committee in 2001 & 2002. In 2001 he was the Chair of the inaugural International Young Professionals Summit, with the summit proceedings going to both the United Nations and the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. He is the immediate past Chairman of teh Board of the College of Mechanical Engineering and the Deputy Chair of the National Committee on Mechatronics Engineering.

Michael lives in Sydney and currently works for Woolworths Limited as Distribution Centre Design Manager within the Supply Chain Solutions business transformation team. He has previously been Group Engineering Manager with responsibility for Asia Pacific, North America and Europe for a fast growing listed Clean Energy technology company; Food, Beverage & Manufacturing Senior Consultant with a leading integrated systems company; and Asia Pacific Engineering Manager and manager of the Innovation Centre for the world’s largest equipment pooling company. Between these roles, Michael has also been the founder of several startups in areas as diverse as robotics, furniture manufacturing, and industrial visualisation.

Mike Silvasan is a Senior Supply Chain Operations Management Executive with an outstanding record for driving large scale change to build organisational effectiveness and significantly improved revenue, profit and performance results. Mike has supply chain management, logistics, warehousing and Sales & Operations Planning expertise and 15+ years’ global experience with highly-respected Australian, Japanese and German manufacturing companies. Extensive leadership, management, engineering, operations and business administration experience.

Mike is also an expert in Lean Manufacturing and Continuous Improvement Methodologies, and is a concept-to-execution project manager with a reputation for finding innovative solutions to complex, global supply chains, reducing costs, and streamlining operations.

Mike has a proven track record in transforming organisational cultures, developing strategies promoting S&OP excellence, engendering pride in performance and reinvigorating teams to deliver high-impact results.

Nati Harpaz is the CEO of Catch Group, Australia’s largest pure eCommerce organisation with a retail product business as well as a daily deals business. Nati’s focus is on building cultures in organisations to enable rapid growth which stems from the understanding that management cannot compromise on the quality of its human resource as well as the requirement of a very clear and concise business strategy to allow the entire organisation to focus on achieving it.

Nati’s background includes Law, Information Technology, Retail, Media and generally everything digital. As an entrepreneur from a young age he has had various experiences across multiple industries but always in a leadership position. On top of his position as CEO of Catch Group he is also the chairman of APAC’s largest retail media organisation – Inside Retail as well as an advisory board member of several publicly listed companies.

Samaneh Madanian is a PhD candidate in IT– Health Informatics– at AUT University, New Zealand. She is also a part-time lecturer in the fields of Computer Science and Health Informatics at the School of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences, AUT University. Samaneh graduated from Staffordshire University with a Masters in IT Management. In her Masters, she worked on the application of RFID in supply chains and retail industry.

She worked as an IT expert/consultant and also a business analyst before starting her PhD. Her passion now is research in different areas of health informatics with the aims of bridging the gap between academia and industries and putting the related knowledge into practice. She is currently researching “Disaster eHealth” which is the application of ehealth technologies in disaster management cycle. She is particularly interested in the application of IoT and RFID technologies in different sectors and areas, specifically supply chains, healthcare environments, disaster management cycle, disaster healthcare and disaster supply chains, in which she has a number of publications.

Scott Leydin is the supply chain manager at the Australian sports apparel brand 2XU which is designed and developed here in Australia.

As part of this role he manages a global logistics network of company operated warehouses, 3rd party logistics service providers and suppliers in over 15 countries and across four continents.

Throughout his 5 years at 2XU he has been continually challenged to develop a logistics solution to support a fast growing multi-channel distribution strategy that consists of company owned retail and online stores, big box and specialty retail accounts and an international distribution network that spans over 50 countries.

Scott has over 30 year’s practical experience in the logistics industry and holds a graduate diploma in Distribution Management from RMIT.

He has also been a sessional lecturer on a number of logistics management subjects at Swinburne University.

Prior to his current position at 2XU Scott’s other roles have included a couple of stints in logistics management roles at Hewlett Packard, operating as an independent logistics consultant, the general manager of a large Australian transport and contract logistics company and as the branch manager and licenced customers broker of an international freight forwarding company.

In his spare time Scott is also the chief content writer for his 3rd party logistics management blog.

Dr. Siamak Tafavogh has a PhD in Machine Learning from University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). Dr. Tafavogh has experience of working as a data scientist with a number of leading Australian companies such as Commonwealth Bank Of Australia (CBA), Coca Cola Amatil (CCA) and Cancer Institute of NSW. Currently he is working in CCA as a lead data scientist. Dr. Tafavogh is also UTS adjunct academic and has a number of data analytics courses with UTS. Dr. Tafavogh role in CCA is to provide advance analytic capability to the organization by designing, establishing and running a center of excellence in advance analytics, project management support on key strategic problems across the business and leading the development and implementation of data science strategy in CCA.

Terrence started his supply chain and automation journey in the ‘80’s within defence in the Royal Australian Army Ordnance Corp.

Since that time he has been involved in warehouse automation with food manufacturing and more recently operations within a 3PL provider in Brisbane.

Terrence has worked at all levels for international and domestic companies in defence, mining, agriculture and 3PL. He has worked within supply chain functions including warehousing, inventory management, procurement, logistics, fleet management, S&OP, operations, manufacturing, change management, consulting and training/development.

Terrence has a Master degree in Supply Chain & Logistics with additional qualifications in business, management, engineering, training and development. Terrence is currently focussing on the Next Gen supply chain systems. He believes that when technology is ready, that Next Gen will be weight based and through the integration of systems logic to the MRP, will align the systems process links to ‘quality’ metrics and process-aligned dashboards.

Terrence’s aim is to develop systems intelligence that will alert stakeholders to events operating outside of expectant levels and with his industry background and roles played, is poised to provide Australian content to a global arena.

Tim Gray is the founder and chief architect of Prophit Systems, expert supply chain software solutions which elevate planning processes and accelerate profits.He works with business owners & senior managers to rapidly pinpoint complex supply chain process problems and solve them. He does this by quickly assessing the critical drivers in your supply chain and focus on the areas that will deliver the highest return on investment.To date he has delivered an average ROI of 418% across 78 client’s.Having run 12 manufacturing & distribution companies and consulting to many more, he was well aware that the right information & business process is key to shifting decision making from reactive to agile & opportunistic. Similarly the idea of purely relying on historic information to navigate your business decision making is a like driving a car by looking in the rear vision mirror. The best way to be agile is to be able to see into your future. Tim developed Prophit Systems, so manufacturers can plan, execute and track supply chain strategies more efficiently, ultimately lowering inventory, improving service levels and accelerating profits. It empowers the planners, eliminating tedious spreadsheets and elevating efficiencies with a complete solution for demand and supply planning, S&OP, network optimization, inventory optimization, manufacturing scheduling and shop floor control as well as overall compliance via a control tower.

Tim’s focus is now growing the US market for Prophit Systems. 2016, saw Tim opening the first office in the USA, the interest in his Packaging Industry expertise has warranted this investment. Tim’s 20 year career has seen him associated with companies such as: Visy, Amcor, BHP, Schlumberger, Alcoa, Ardagh, Impress, Brownes Dairy, Australian Biotechnologies, Cochlear, George Western Foods, DONS KRC Smallgoods, Detmold Packaging, Orora Group, Aperio Group, British American Tobacco and Xerium to name a few.