Dr. Ananth Seshan is the Chairman of 5G Technologies Ltd., a digital automation solutions group. The group is headquartered in Ottawa and has operations in Mexico and India. He has been the main thought leader behind the successful, flagship product of the group, Enterprise Gateway. Enterprise Gateway has a user footprint in 20 countries globally and more than 100 installations in large manufacturing organizations and utilities. The product is the first of its kind in the niche area called “Plant to Enterprise Integration” (P2E) and has served in the field for more than 500,000 hours in major global manufacturing and utility companies. P2E is a solution area that focuses on synergistically integrating the real time operational/production dynamics of the plant to the business processes of the enterprise, such as maintenance, quality and planning, in order to significantly (and opportunistically) improve operational efficiency, effectiveness, product quality, customer serviceability, and in general, manufacturing, energy and maintenance costs.

Ananth has been a consultant to several large manufacturing organizations and utilities worldwide for the last 3 decades in the areas of robotics, automation, and of late, digital manufacturing. He was an invited member of a Special Task Force set up by Industry Canada during the turn of the millennium to explore the viability of applying advanced manufacturing technologies as a strategy to build competitive advantage in the manufacturing segment in Canada. He has also served as an invited member of the Steering Committee of a Canadian Federal Center of Excellence in Robotics and Automation. He has been an invited speaker in many international forums on manufacturing automation and has won several awards for innovation and entrepreneurship. He is presently the Chairman of the Asset Performance Management Working Group of MESA a leading not for profit organization in North America that establishes standards and best practices for the manufacturing industry.

Ananth has several publications in journals and international conference proceedings, owns 2 patents and has authored a chapter in a book published by Springer in 2015 on “Innovative Process Development in the Metallurgical Industry”.

Ananth completed his undergraduate degree in Production Engineering from the Madras University and a Masters Degree in Robotics and Automation from Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai. He received his Ph.D from the University of Toronto in 1992 in the area of “Common-Sense Reasoning” in Robotic Mechanisms.