The third annual SAP-Centric EAM conference will provide significant value to delegates through five informative tracks available each day. Thought-provoking content will be delivered by organizations like yours that have successfully implemented SAP Solutions for EAM. Each track will be managed by a chairperson who is recognized as an SAP-Centric EAM leader. This year’s chairs represent a range of industries and backgrounds. Read through the biographies listed below to learn more about the 2007 SAP-Centric EAM Track Chairs:

Jim McMahon
Global SAP Project (GAME Maintenance Execution Lead)
Shell International Petroleum Company Limited
Jim McMahon has over 20 years of maintenance experience in areas including military aviation, rotating equipment, and food processing/ packaging. He just completed a two-year assignment in London as the preventive and corrective maintenance design lead for the build phase of Shell’s Global SAP implementation. He recently joined the PM deployment team of that same program for Shell's US Lubricants business. He is a past PM Program chair for the Americas’ SAP Users Group (ASUG) and past Vice Chair of Houston’s ASUG Chapter. Jim is SAP certified in the PM Module, and is a Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM).

Jodie Perry
SAP PM Team Lead
International Paper
Jodie Perry started his career with International Paper (IP) in 1969. He has held numerous positions in paper mill maintenance organizations, such as Supervisor of the Maintenance Planning Department and Area Maintenance Manager. In 1999, he joined the SAP EAM Team within IP to manage large facility implementations. As an active participant in ASUG, he became the first Customer Champion for the SAP EAM Executive Exchange, a group of select companies meeting for the purpose of understanding and influencing the longer term vision and strategy of SAP EAM Product Development. In 2005, he served as a Steering Committee member for the first annual SAP-Centric EAM conference, and served as Track Chair for the SAP-Centric EAM conference in 2006.

Gregg Manley
Internal Business Consultant
Kraft Foods
Gregg Manley began his career over 30 years ago as an industrial machinist and has grown through various manufacturing positions including maintenance coordinator, maintenance planner, stores manager, purchasing agent, MRO buyer, and safety risk manager. For over 12 years, his passion for the SAP tool and supporting best practices has positioned him as the key support for continuously improving the Kraft Foods Global, Inc. implementation of the Plant Maintenance and Materials Management modules. Gregg holds various leadership positions in the Americas’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG) and has spoken at many international conferences and seminars in North America, Europe and Australia.

Doug Thomson
IT Applications Team Leader
NOVA Chemicals
Doug Thomson is currently an Information Technology Team Leader at NOVA Chemicals, working in the support and development of IT solutions for the manufacturing plants. Doug has 12 years SAP experience, beginning as a project team member on NOVA Chemical's original SAP implementation in 1995, and continuing through various roles supporting the company's efforts in the areas of: Maintenance, Reliability, Engineering, and Materials Management. Doug has also become involved in support of the Quality Management and E H & S business areas.

Prior to NOVA Chemicals’ SAP implementation, Doug worked for five years in Turnaround Planning at NOVA Chemicals Petrochemical plants, and ten years construction & maintenance in the Oil & Gas industry.

Doug is a past chair of the ASUG Plant Maintenance SIG, and the ASUG Executive Exchange.

Jim Ryan
Plant Maintenance Manager
Lincoln Electric System
Jim Ryan has over 30 years of experience in the power industry. At Lincoln Electric Systems, a publicly owned utility company in Lincoln, Nebraska, Jim works with Steam Generation, Heavy Industrial Gas Turbines, and Combined Cycle Generation. He also has worked with Plant Maintenance and Inventory Management Systems.

Jim is in charge of the SAP Plant Maintenance Module at LES, and also has extensive knowledge of the Materials Management Module. As a member of the SAP implementation team in 1999, Jim managed the conversion from Legacy Systems for the Transportation, Substation, Generation, Underground Network, Line Clearance, and Building & Grounds departments. In 2002, Jim managed an upgrade from Version 4.0b to Version 4.7. Currently Jim is implementing SAP at LES’s new generation facility.

Sherry Wheelock
Senior Business Analyst - Logistics
Polk County Public Schools
Sherry Wheelock is a Senior Business Analyst in Systems Applications within Business Services for the School District of Polk County, Florida. She is responsible for SAP AM, PS and PM modules. Sherry was a team lead during the 4.5 implementation in 1999 and the upgrade to 4.7 in 2004. Sherry also previously served as a Business Coordinator in Transportation Services for 10 years. She has a bachelors degree in Finance from Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.

Tony Urdiales
Manager - Business Solutions
FirstEnergy
Tony Urdiales has worked at FirstEnergy for over 30 years in both the generation business and information technology. He has been responsible for the successful implementation of numerous IT projects in his career. These projects started with a mainframe work management systems for fossil plants, continued with financial accounting systems including general ledger, time entry and management reporting, moved on to the deployment of PC’s and desktop software, continued with a client server based work management systems for fossil and nuclear, and finally; implemented SAP PM for the fossil and nuclear generation business. Since the SAP implementation in 2003, he has been managing the support and the effort of extending SAP functionality in the fossil and nuclear sites. His current effort is to support the upgrade of SAP from 4.6c to ERP2005 for generation with a focus on Value Engineering and Usability. The completion of this upgrade is scheduled for October 29, 2007.

Tony holds a bachelors of science in electrical engineering and an MBA in management degrees from the University of Akron. He is a licensed professional engineer in Ohio.

Jane Nolan
Director, Service & Asset Management Solution Marketing
SAP Labs
Jane Nolan works as Director, Service & Asset Management Solution Marketing for SAP Labs where she is responsible for accelerating revenue and usage growth for SAP's Service & Asset Management Solution.  Jane has over 18 years of high-tech marketing, technical account management, consulting and support experience. In her most recent role prior to SAP, Jane was Senior Industry & Solutions marketing manager for MRO Software focused on enterprise asset & service management solutions. Previously Jane was at Oracle in the role of senior product marketing manager in the product configuration market as well as the OLAP database market. She has also held positions at Sybase, Cornerstone Research and Computrition.
Jane received her MBA from Northeastern University and her BS in Nutrition from University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Bob Hogg
Director, BU Service & Asset Management
SAP Labs
Bob Hogg is the director of business strategy for SAP’s Service and Asset Management Business Unit. In addition to his SAP experience, Bob’s background includes over 25 years as both a manager and consultant focused on service, logistics, and asset management processes in the high-tech, industrial machinery, and aerospace and defense industries. Bob began his career in the US Air Force in a variety of positions including inventory analyst, internal process auditor and inventory financial manager. Bob continued his career with Martin Marietta as an aftermarket provisioning specialist determining maintenance support strategies and requirements for major weapon systems. Bob's more recent experience includes running the field depots and customer service operations in the semiconductor industry and as a management consultant with Deloitte Consulting focusing on the alignment of enterprise technologies and aftermarket service and maintenance processes.

Paul Kurchina
KurMeta
Paul Kurchina is considered an SAP visionary and a leader in leveraging SAP and mobile technologies. He has led numerous SAP implementations and has been involved in various leadership roles in America's SAP User Group (ASUG.) Paul has co-authored a book with Ravi Kalakota entitled Mobilizing SAP: Business Processes, ROI and Best Practices. This book focuses on real-world mobilization of business processes and provides analysis of the mobile business landscape. Paul was the lead architect behind the Mobile and RFID program at TransAlta, a global electrical generation and marketing company. Since joining ASUG in 1993, he has held multiple leadership positions in plant maintenance, utilities, production strategies, enterprise portals and enterprise architecture. Paul became actively involved in the SAP world in 1993 through previous positions at Ontario Hydro and PricewaterhouseCoopers where he developed and launched large-scale IT initiatives. Paul lives in Calgary with his wife, two boys and a Portuguese Water Dog Reba. His hobby is applied technology.