As the VP of Products and Services for Zero Wait-State, Dries D'hooghe drives the strategy, definition and delivery of PLM products and solutions that enable our customers to implement PLM best practices and processes in a fast and cost effective manner. He also helps customers with the definition and implementation of global environmental best practices into their Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) processes and systems. Dries navigates customers through the ecosystem of environmental regulatory experts, best practice leaders, and software vendors to achieve concrete and time-driven goals.
Dries has over 15 years of experience in SCM and PLM in the consumer packaged goods, process, medical device, and electronics industries. He has held several positions in sales, business consulting, product management, and product marketing at companies such as IBM, Agile Software and Oracle, both in the US and Europe.
As the product manager and product strategy manager for PLM at Agile Software and Oracle, Dries not only created the Agile Product Governance and Compliance module (PG&C) in 2004, but also drove the strategic direction of the product. Agile PG&C was the first solution to tie compliance requirements and compliance information to the product design process to provide instant feedback to designers and manufacturing engineers about the compliance and environmental impact of their decisions (design for compliance, design for environment).
After leaving Oracle, Dries started his own consultancy focused on helping customers implement best compliance and environmental practices, design compliance roadmaps, and ultimately configure these processes in compliance solutions such as Agile PG&C. His years of experience in the setup and configuration of Agile PLM for numerous customers helps him to extend the possibilities of the system in industries it was not originally designed to accommodate.
Education: Master’s degree in Maritime Engineering and an MBA in Industrial Management from the Vlerick Business School.