Don't Miss What the Industry Is Learning Next
The Summit starts Monday.
Every organization is being asked to do more with less while making faster, smarter decisions. The question is not whether change is coming. The question is how quickly your team can adapt.
At the 6th Annual Service & Warranty Lifecycle Summit, you’ll hear directly from industry leaders sharing real-world lessons, challenges, and results.
Dealer Capability. Purchasing Alignment. Connected Data.
These aren’t sales presentations. They’re industry Deep Dives designed to help you benchmark your current approach, uncover new opportunities, and learn how others are tackling today’s toughest service and warranty challenges.
If your team influences dealer performance, supplier recovery, quality improvement, purchasing decisions, warranty costs, or service operations, these are conversations you can’t afford to miss.
October 19–21, 2026 | The Westin Southfield Detroit
Reserve Your Spot Today
October 20–21: Leadership Summit and roundtables
October 19: Workshops and VIP Dinner
This Week's CONNECT Highlights Key Deep Dive Industry Led Sessions:
Bring The Problem You Need To Move Forward.
These 3 sessions tackle linked challenges: applying guidance, agreeing on action and using data to make better decisions.
Learn from the industry. Benchmark your approach. Return with ideas you can put into practice immediately.
Bring the colleagues responsible for turning those decisions into practice.
Moving Beyond Training: Building Dealer Capability & Warranty Accuracy
Tuesday, October 20 | 10:00–10:45 AM ET
A completed training record does not tell you whether a dealer can apply the guidance when a warranty decision gets difficult.
This Warranty Admin Training session comprises 4 deep-dive presentations on key themes:
• Role-based certification: prepare people for the responsibilities of their role, beyond completing training.
• Real-time knowledge in the workflow: make guidance available at the point of decision.
• Guided tools: support dealer execution with clearer steps for complex or unfamiliar work.
Chelsea Alarie, Global Warranty Project Coordinator, General Motors
Victor Garcia, Deputy GM Warranty Group America, Nissan North America
Steve Olejniczak, Associate Director Warranty, International
James Nardini, Warranty Operations National Manager, Kia America
Before commissioning another training program, identify where the gap lies: learning, access to knowledge or execution. These 4 presentations connect those challenges to dealer capability and warranty accuracy.
Why Can’t We Get On The Same Page?
Tuesday, October 20 | 12:00–12:30 PM ET
The problem is shared. The priorities may not be.
Drawing on the Purchasing & Supplier Cost Sharing Xchange Group, this panel examines the competing priorities, organizational friction and knowledge gaps that hold back meaningful action.
Jim Holloway, Former GM Purchasing, Toyota Motor North America
Daryl Kreskowiak, Director NA Warranty Recovery, Stellantis
Eric Bloink, Warranty Performance Manager Interior and Exterior, General Motors
Where does action stall: missing information, conflicting priorities or unclear responsibility?
Compare purchasing and warranty perspectives, then continue in the Purchasing & Supplier Cost Sharing Xchange Group. Its agenda examines how OEM-to-dealer data, coding, causal-part accuracy and dealer processes affect supplier responsibility and cost recovery.
The Data Is Already There: Why Can’t The Industry Connect The Dots?
Wednesday, October 21 | 12:30–1:00 PM ET
A failure record is a starting point. Your team still needs to understand what happened and what to do next.
Connect warranty, field-service, diagnostic, telematics and product data to understand root cause and decide the response. Continue the discussion at the Field Services Connected Data Xchange Group launch at 2:15 PM.
Jennifer Jones Wheeler, Former Global Lifetime Warranty Chief, Ford Motor Company
Tomlin Abraham, Assistant Director Warranty Performance, General Motors
Phillip Shmaon, Customer Warranty Engineer, American Battery Solutions
Salman Khalid, Service Methods and Tools Engineer, American Battery Solutions
Help shape the discussion now. The Field Services Connected Data survey covers early issue detection, prioritization, diagnostics, service feedback, corrective action and governance.
Take the survey to receive a free copy of the results and contribute to the Summit conversation.
Slate: A New Service Model Deserves A Closer Look
The New Warranty Ecosystem: Independent, Mobile & Connected Service
Tuesday, October 20 | 11:30 AM–12:00 PM ET
Bryan Tracy, Warranty Manager, Slate Auto
How can a new OEM deliver flexible service while maintaining warranty control, compliance and claim accuracy?
Bryan Tracy brings Slate Auto’s perspective to this deep dive and fireside chat on independent, mobile and connected service.
• Explore service delivery beyond the traditional network through independent, mobile and connected channels.
• Consider how customer convenience can work alongside warranty control, compliance and accurate claims.
• Identify what your organization would need to evaluate before adapting its own service model.
For teams rethinking how service reaches the customer, this session connects a different delivery model with the warranty operation needed to support it.
ServiceNow And Crown Equipment: Knowledge Has To Reach The Work
Wednesday, October 21 | 11:30 AM–12:00 PM ET
Jordan Tauriainen, Senior Director of Global Automotive Go-To-Market, ServiceNow
Ben Bergman, Director of Customer Service, Crown Equipment
A technician searching for an answer needs usable, current knowledge. Crown Equipment’s Ben Bergman points to the foundations: a committed team, consistent writing standards, clear content ownership, structured reviews, fast updates and easy search.
Jordan Tauriainen and Ben Bergman will explore Crown’s knowledge journey, the problems they set out to solve and how AI is starting to shape what comes next:
• The service problems behind the knowledge challenge.
• The people, processes and tools that make knowledge accessible to technicians.
• The knowledge foundations needed as AI shapes the path forward.
If your team is considering AI for service knowledge, start with the bottleneck: capturing information, keeping it current, assigning ownership or making answers easy to find.
This case study gives that discussion a practical foundation.
Who Will You Compare Notes With?
Hear from current leaders at General Motors, Stellantis, Kia America, Nissan North America, International, Slate Auto and Crown Equipment, alongside former Ford and Toyota executives.
Networking breaks, Leadership Xchange lunch tables and the Tech Expo extend the conversations beyond the sessions.
Review the participating companies and plan who you want to meet: the OEM perspective, dealer-process insight or supplier conversation your team needs.
Meet The Partners Supporting The Summit
Our 2026 Summit partners are ServiceNow, Upstream, Pegasystems, Circuitry.AI, Sedgwick, MR Insights, WarrCloud, Syncron, Advantage Technical, Certum, Truepic, Predictive Horizons and Vistral.
Explore the Tech Expo alongside the sessions and connect with the organizations supporting this year’s service and warranty conversations.
Choose Your Conversations. Book Your Place.
You do not need another list of industry challenges. You need time with people who can help you examine them.
Bring the colleagues who share responsibility for the outcome. Warranty, purchasing and technical-service teams can compare what they hear, agree on priorities and carry the discussion back into the business.
The Summit starts Monday, October 19. Book this week, choose your sessions and put the right people in the room.
Do not leave these conversations to the people who made time to attend.
October 19–21, 2026 | The Westin Southfield Detroit
