Gerald J Deren has spent the past 39 years primarily focused on helping companies and customers find ways to optimize their product and/or process development methods.  His work has resulted in finding ways to improve their efficiency, reduce development costs and help them develop a competitive advantage. As a process SME and thought leader, he focuses on improving quality, reducing cycle time or purely improving efficiency and execution through the use of enabling technology, process optimization and skill enhancement. (People, Process and Technology). He represents the voice of the customer and coach’s and counsel’s improvement into solution development. 

Gerry currently leads a team of Academic Enablement professionals across the Americas for Siemens Digital Industries Software (DISW) focused on helping pave the way for students and academia to become “relevant” for manufacturers as they face the challenges of skill retainment, and sustainment within their innovation, validation and manufacturing lifecycles.

Mr. Deren is the originator of a Siemens Academic Enablement and Workforce Development Program named Adopt-A-University that is focused on establishing / building the, OEM to SMB to Academia (K-12 through Higher Ed) ecosystem consisting of engineering and digital manufacturing program domains including curriculum adaptation, research and joint projects. He is a well-known speaker on Industry 4.0, and other model-based topics (Such as the Digital Thread/Twin) related to business process improvement, global supply chain collaboration and product lifecycle management.   

He joined Computervision in 1980 as a Systems Engineer before he became part of a team that invented product lifecycle management business consulting. He joined Siemens to develop their business development organization in 1998.