The 7th Annual Heavy Duty Remanufacturing Group Summit was held on Jan. 21 at the Mirage Hotel prior to Heavy Duty Aftermarket Week.

The Summit meeting kicked off with Bruce Plaxton of BGP Marketing, who focused his comments on the commercial vehicle market including truck, agriculture and construction.

Richard Gordon, new business development director at Cummins Inc., spoke about “design for remanufacturing” and how his company is being very proactive in looking at all sides of manufacturing so that remanufacturing is impacted in a positive way.

Mandy Patterson, vice president of Owner Resource Group, spoke on the private equity market and the availability of funds to expand and grow your business.

Macy Neshati, vice president of Complete Coach Works in Southern California addressed remanufacturing the complete vehicle, covering the remanufacturing process for 12-year-old transit buses, rail cars, locomotives, and trucks. His company has been repowering vehicles for over 27 years, working with fleets, amusement parks, cities, counties and state governments, as well as many private companies to remanufacture complete vehicles.

The afternoon session featured Bill Wade of Wade & Partners, talking about the need for continuous innovation within a company and how it directly leads to its future success and survival.

Alan Treat, international trade analyst with the U.S. International Trade Commission, discussed the results of their extensive survey of the remanufacturing market in the USA. His talk focused primarily with the heavy-duty portion of their survey, but he did mention the other aspects of the industry as well. The U.S. Trade Commission recently completed a 284-page report about the entire remanufacturing industry, which is the first in-depth report since the 1995 report conducted by Boston University.

Joe Kripli of Wabco Reman Solutions offered a global market perspective of the heavy-duty electronic and mechatronic marketplace. His presentation focused on the myriad of opportunities that exist for remanufacturing the ever-growing population of units.

Sheila Andrews, manager of government affairs at the Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association, discussed the challenge of achieving heavy duty “right-to-repair” in the future. Following the recent victories in Massachusetts on the “right-to-repair” issue, she discussed what the heavy-duty aftermarket industry can do at a grassroots level to make the playing field more level with the OEMs.

The concluding speaker of the summit was Matthew Wegener of ISoft Data Systems who discussed how to manage inventory and workflow for profit and productivity.

Next year’s Heavy Duty Remanufacturing Group Summit will be held on Jan. 27, 2014 at the Mirage Hotel at the start of the Heavy Duty Aftermarket Week (Jan. 27-30).