Joost Helwegen has been working as General Manager at Broekman Automotive for the past 7 years. In May 2006 Broekman Automotive launched the world’s largest active RFID/RTLS system, covering 40.000 storage locations for new cars, tracking and tracing 300.000 units per year through the operational process. Having been a member of the steering committee of the RFID project and being the main user of the system Joost will talk about the journey from the first rough idea to a fully implemented system.

Volker Heidorn is Manager RFID Kraft Foods International where he is currently responsible for the Kraft Foods RFID projects outside North America. Volker has 22 years experience in IT has been involved in miscellaneous ECR activities since 1994 including RFID / EPC and active in several standardisation initiatives like EPCglobal and GS1. Currently he is co-chair in the steering team EPC/RFID at GS1 Germany and member the EAP co-chairs group of EPCglobal.

Ben has been Managing Director of Air Cargo Netherlands (ACN) and the United Association of the Dutch Air Cargo Industry since 2003. ACN works to maintain and support the prominent role of the Netherlands in the air cargo industry and is constantly striving for smarter ways of working together in the air cargo chain and better business conditions for air logistics and related companies. He will reveal the initial results of technical tests of RFID in the Port of Amsterdam and the Air Cargo Industry at Schiphol.

As Programme Manager Supply Chain Development at Saab Aerotech, Fredrik Hillbom is responsible for a wide range of activity and process development projects. He has been involved in experimental RFID work at Saab since autumn 2006 and is currently involved in a major Saab Aerotech RFID pilot project aiming to create a strong, standardised and flexible RFID backbone for future use within all of Saab's current and coming spheres of activities. Fredrik is also managing a separate RFID implementation project for another Saab business unit with the overall purpose to speed up existing material handling at a mobile military training facility. The chosen RFID solution is expected to be rolled out during spring 2008

Paul has worked for Nestlé for 20 years in a variety of Technical and Managerial roles, and is currently the Head of Engineering for Logistics and lead contact for RFID/EPC implementation at Nestlé UK. He has been involved with RFID since 2003 and was a founder member of the EPCglobal European Adoption programme. From mid 2005 he has been involved as a partner on the BRIDGE project investigating the application of RFID in manufacturing

Gregor has been Air France since 1999, first as lead architect for the re-engineering project of the IT system managing the global Air France flight programme. Following this assignment he was in charge of the internal IT consulting group responsible for the provisioning of industrialized development tools, frameworks and processes within the project development branch. Since 2004, he has been chief architect for application infrastructure within the architecture and strategy group and responsible for all major infrastructure initiatives such as J2EE Application Architecture, Enterprise Portal, Content Management ... as well as the introduction of RFID within the Enterprise Information System.

Stephane Pique works at GS1/EPCglobal as European Director EPC/RFID. Stephane started with RFID in 1993 and worked for several companies including Philips Semiconductors, Kudelski, Sokymat, Global ID, Seeburger and also as an RFID consultant for several Governments and multi-national companies. His business experience brought him to the position of knowing RFID from all necessary components up to the complete RFID solution and processes. He will provide an invaluable update on the work of GS1 and the current status of RFID standards.

Dr Dimitris Kiritsis, EPFL, Switzerland, is the Initiator and Scientific Co-ordinator of the PROMISE EU FP6 IP 507100 project, the pan-European consortium consisting of 21 partners from 9 different countries. Operating from November 2004 until May 2008, at a cost of €14 million, the core concept of PROMISE has been to use RFID principles to transfer information generated by Smart Products – products that are able to sense their condition and environment - into knowledge which can then be used to better support existing products and to create new product and service value.

Frank has worked at New Balance for 8 years as an Advanced Manufacturing Engineer. His primary focus has been as an Engineering Project leader to support their 5 US shoe factories. Because of the technical nature of RFID, corporate management chose him to run the RFID programme beginning in 2005 when the Pilot Programme began. NB has completed an Apparel RFID pilot and are now in the midst of their Footwear Retail Pilot. Frank will share their experiences to date.

Uwe Quide is RFID project Manager at Kaufhof, part of the Metro Group, which is completing an RFID deployment spanning 200 locations, making it the biggest RFID rollout in Europe. In his presentation he will discuss how Kaufhof are now moving to the next stage with RFID - trialling smart shelves and smart dressing rooms.

Carsten joined Robert Bosch in 1999, in the corporate sector Research and Development. His work is focused in the areas of production engineering and production logistics and he has been active in several RFID projects within all divisions of Robert Bosch. He is also a member of the German automotive association (VDA) for the standardisation of RFID for the automotive industry and led the RFID Project with the result of the VDA Recommendation "5501". Carsten is currently responsible for IT and Lean Logistics Processes in the Logistics Department in Eisenach.

Henri Barthel is Director, Global Partnerships and Projects at the GS1 Global Office in Brussels. He is currently Coordinator of BRIDGE, a three year European Union funded integrated project dedicated to research, development, training and demonstration in the effective use of RFID based on EPCglobal standards. He will give a background to the project and its key timelines.

Lars has been at SSAB since 1975 in anumber of roles including Logistics, IT & Maintenance. He will outline how SSAB is using active RFID on 400 wagons for transporting slabs in order to minimize manual workload, handle larger volumes and improve quality.

Dr Michael Hartmann has served as the Head of the Pharmacy Department at the Hospital of the Friedrich-Schiller-University, Jena, Germany, since 1995. Prior to this appointment, he held positions including Senior Staff Member in the Pharmacy Department at the Hospital of the Barmherzigen Brüder, Paderborn, Germany, and Research Fellow at the Harvard Medical School, Mailman Research Center, Belmont, USA. His areas of study and interest also include public health, economy for medical practice, and cost-effectiveness analysis for medical technologies and pharmaceuticals.

In his current position, George Barrie heads a team that provides a centralised ‘Packaging Centre of Excellence’ supplying Actavis operations globally. The team is driven by the philosophy of “Making Medicine Accessible. He will discuss the key issues involved in incorporating RFID into their packaging.

Naheed joined Cimpa Ltd, an Airbus subsidiary in March 2006 and has since been responsible for Sales and Marketing. She has recently been introducing Cimpa’s Product Management System (TrakLOGIKTM) into the healthcare industry. Naheed will be focusing on the diversification into healthcare, building on the software development and quality principles established through the many years serving the Aerospace industry.

Laurence has 10 years experience in European Distribution for a global Wholesale provider of technology products and supply chain management services, while she also possesses 4 years leading the Business Process Improvement Initiative for Baxter Supply Chain. Laurence drives projects to improve Baxter's response to internal and external customers. Amongst these are cool chain processes, packaging, temperature controlled shipping and Tracking & Tracing using RFID

Christoph is currently Head of the Competence Centre Logistics IT at Dematic. Under his responsibility new technologies, including RFID, but also Pick by Voice, etc. are built into innovative logistics concepts and solutions. In his workshop, which he is co-presenting with Holger Schönherr, he will reveal how RFID can boost productivity in assembly and intralogistics.

Holger Schoenherr heads the Competence Center RFID within Siemens Automation and Drives group and he is member of the board of AIM Germany. During his career, he has gained significant experience in engineering and management of large-scale IT and automation projects. He will co-present the workshop on how RFID can boost productivity in assembly and intralogistics.

Ashley is the Chairman and Co-Founder of Reva Systems, a developer of RFID network infrastructure equipment. His workshop session will examine key success factors for deploying various open-loop and closed-loop RFID applications including Supply Chain Management, Asset Tracking, Product Pedigree, WIP, and Security.

Edwin Kalischnig is the Director of Business Development for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Sensor-Based Services initiatives in the EMEA Region.<Br> In this role, he is responsible for driving the Oracle license and consulting business with respect to RFID related opportunities on behalf of Oracle Corporation. This emerging technology, also referred to as the “next generation bar-code”, will have significant impact on most business processes in almost all industries as well as on the underlying IT infrastructures. Through his role and involvement in Oracle’s HQ RFID Development Team, he is co-responsible for ensuring that RFID is embedded in the organization through product development, business development, partner alliances, marketing and delivery.