Rod Schrader, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Komatsu America Corp., will be the banquet keynote speaker at the SAE 2013 Commercial Vehicle Engineering Congress (COMVEC), to be held October 1-3 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois.

Schrader will speak at the event’s Industry Keynote and Awards Banquet on Wednesday, October 2. He was appointed Vice Chairman and CEO of Komatsu America Corp. in April 2012. In this role, he is responsible for leading the company’s Construction and Utility, Mining, Parts, Finance, Forestry, Forklift, Manufacturing and Engineering Divisions, along with the corresponding back office support functions of Legal, Human Resources, Information Technology, Service Support, and Marketing.

With the theme of “10 Years Running,” the 2013 COMVEC brings together a global assembly of both on- and off-road commercial vehicle engineering professionals (including engineers, technologists, executives, consultants, and representatives from government and academia) for the sharing of technical knowledge and networking.

The event features technical sessions and executive panels focusing on the latest trends, technologies, business issues and challenges facing the commercial vehicle industry, as well as an exhibit showcasing the industry’s latest supply chain innovations. Executive panels will focus on topics such as:

    Designing tomorrow’s on/off-road tractors
    Savvy telematics
    Simulation and modeling
    Natural gas usage in commercial vehicles

SAE International is a global association of more than 138,000 engineers and related technical experts in the aerospace, automotive and commercial-vehicle industries. SAE International's core competencies are life-long learning and voluntary consensus standards development. SAE International's charitable arm is the SAE Foundation, which supports many programs, including A World In Motion® and the Collegiate Design Series™.