At the 2025 edition of the North American Manufacturing Excellence Summit series we sat down with Seth Davies of Competitive Solutions to talk about his B2B podcast, The Pulse of High Performance.

Executive Platforms has collaborated with Competitive Solutions since its earliest days, and there are few organizations better positioned to speak to senior executives about how they have achieved success and what advice they would want to share with an audience of business leaders at all stages of their careers and working lives. In this episode we talk to Seth about the past, present, and future of his show in the hopes that some of our listeners will find it valuable as well. Enjoy!

Seth Davies
Executive Vice President
Competitive Solutions, Inc.

As EVP of Competitive Solutions, Inc., Seth runs the day-to-day operations of the Atlanta office. He joined CSI in 1997 as Director of Sales and Marketing. Prior to joining CSI, he worked in the printing and publishing industry serving as Southeast Regional Director for Enterprise Communications. Seth is a popular speaker at Human Resource, Operational Excellence and Quality Conferences. He believes organizations today must create and sustain a culture with three non-negotiable attributes. Those attributes include a sense of urgency, a clear and concise business focus and leadership driven, shared accountability. He has assisted a wide variety of organizations in the development of their key business metrics, documented communication strategy, and established a collective accountability across the company. Organizations Seth has worked with include Pfizer, Genentech, Genzyme, Goodwill Industries, Revlon, Michelin Tire, Gerber Legendary Blades, National Institute Severely Handicapped (NISH), and several Army Depots. He is a graduate of Presbyterian College.

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With over 32 years of experience transforming businesses through effective leadership training, Competitive Solutions, Inc. is giving organizations the power to make decisions that are fact-driven and company-directed. We are providing meaningful ways to collect data that leads to the creation of a responsible business culture. We believe that by bringing transparency, unity, and stability to each company we work with, we help our clients drive success throughout their organizations.

At the 2025 edition of the North American Manufacturing Excellence Summit series we sat down with Johan Beukema of BCI Global to have a conversation about site selection and footprint optimization in a world where these decisions are always important, but recent events are bringing them into sharper focus than ever.

We have had the pleasure of speaking with the experts at BCI Global at many Executive Platforms’ events over the years. In this episode we talk about which questions are always important, and also what is new and changing in this space. What do senior executives need to know when they make decisions about where their businesses are going to operate? What does good advice look like, and how do you get a well-rounded, multi-faceted understanding of all the factors and variables you need to make an informed decision? For all this and more, give this episode a listen!

Johan Beukema
Managing Partner
BCI Global

Johan Beukema is Managing Partner at BCI Global, leading the global manufacturing footprint optimization and location & site selection practice. He has a degree in International Business at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Johan started at BCI Global in 1999 and has since then supported hundreds of companies in their manufacturing, supply chain and location projects across the globe, including North and South America, EMEA and the full Asia region. He has a very strong experience base in different industries with references such as e.g. (sample only) J&J, IKEA, Novo Nordisk, Olympus, ThermoFisher, Insulet, Abbott, Silgan Closures, Pepsico, Mondelez, Yanmar, Cisco, Starkey, ExxonMobil, Navico Group, Elring Klinger, Mann + Hummel, Bausch & Lomb, and many others. He is a regular speaker at conferences and seminars and he is a Member of the global Site Selectors Guild.

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BCI Global is a recognized global consulting leader in developing manufacturing footprint and distribution network strategies and location strategy & site selection consulting for production plants, distribution centers, engineering/software hubs in US, Mexico, LATAM, Europe, China and Asia. BCI has teams and offices in Atlanta, Bay Area, Los Angeles, Dallas; in Europe in the Netherlands and Frankfurt; and in Asia in Shanghai, Singapore, Taipei and India Clients acknowledge BCI’s combination of strategic thinking and operations focused action plans; its independent, result oriented and co-operative attitude; and its tailor-made, cost effective approach.

At the 2025 edition of the North American Manufacturing Excellence Summit series we sat down with Matt Delaney of Covalent to talk about the advances and new capabilities Artificial Intelligence is bringing to the important fields of workforce management and workforce development, especially as it relates to manufacturing organizations. How does one separate the optimism and enthusiasm for AI from what is really practical and applicable to companies working today? What do the real-uses cases look like now, and how do experts like Matt think this will build and grow? Where are these new tools going to be in the next few years as they mature into comfortable, familiar, trustworthy additions to the existing toolbox? For all this and more, give this episode a listen!

Matthew Delaney
Head of Enterprise Solutions
Covalent

Matt is the co-founder and Head of Enterprise Solutions at Covalent Networks, a multi-stakeholder software application that streamlines the hands-on learning in the field and on the floor and elevates mission-critical proficiency data to company leaders so that they can make informed workforce decisions.

Covalent is an enterprise SaaS application that enables end-to-end workforce qualification processes on-the-floor and in-the-field. In doing so, we capture unique qualification data that can be operationalized to drive cross-training, accelerate time-to-productivity, inform manpower planning, and enable process control (e.g., qualification-based badging / work order sign-off). Customers include Fortune 500 aerospace and automotive OEMs.

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Covalent’s growing suite of tactical software solutions enables complex manufacturers to continuously maximize labor productivity by systematically:

>> Administering training programs — down to parts, processes & machines
>> Closing performance gaps by leveraging production & quality data
>> Optimizing who works on what, increasing throughput by up to 5%

Customers include Fortune 500 jet engine, automotive, and chemical manufacturers.

www.covalentnetworks.com