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Rockwell Focus on Asia Pacific

ControlGlobal.com
04/04/2011

By Nick Denbow, Industrial Automation Insider

Steve Eisenbrown, the current Rockwell senior vice president responsible for the Architecture and Software (A&S) operating segment, is to take the role of senior vice president, strategic development from April 2011, and will be responsible for global business development, alignment of strategic investments and initiatives as well as the company's multi-year global business process transformation project.

Keith Nosbusch, chairman and CEO, said: "Steve has made significant contributions to Rockwell Automation for over 35 years in various roles. His breadth of business and customer knowledge and passion for driving results will continue to be a tremendous asset in the ongoing execution of our global growth and performance strategy."

His place at A&S will be taken by Frank Kulaszewicz, who is promoted to senior vice president. For the last three years, Kulaszewicz has served as vice president and general manager for the Control and Visualization Business within A&S. He has worked at Rockwell Automation for over 25 years and has held several key leadership roles in the drive systems and standard drives businesses. Nosbuch commented that "In anticipation that our business will continue to grow more quickly outside the United States—with our fastest growth coming from the Asia Pacific region—Frank will be based in Singapore and will run the A&S segment from there."

In a parallel move to the promotion of Kulaszewicz, Bob Ruff, most recently senior vice president in charge of the Control Products and Solutions (CP&S) segment, is being appointed president of the Rockwell's Asia Pacific Region. This is one of the fastest growing regions of the company with approximately 30% sales growth in fiscal 2010. "With 35 years of service, Bob is one of our most accomplished and experienced executives with an extensive sales management, business and regional leadership background," Nosbusch said. "He is charged with accelerating growth in this important region and building relationships with key customers and partners."

The senior vice president role at CP&S will be taken by Blake Moret, who has served as vice president and general manager, Customer Support and Maintenance in CP&S, for over 3 years. He also has had global experience within Rockwell with roles in Europe and Canada.

Future Developments at Rockwell

At the ARC World Industry Forum in Orlando last month, John Nesi, vice president of business development for Rockwell, gave an overview of his vision for the future. Currently around 50% of Rockwell business comes from the North American sales region, but the future goal is that 60% should be coming from the rest of the world. This is stressed above in relation to the emphasis placed on the Asia-Pacific region, but Nesi also stressed the recent investment in the HiProm acquisition to strengthen activity in the sub-Saharan African market. HiProm is already seen as capable of handling $10m+ projects, having good experience with ControLogix and Integrated Architecture.

Nesi also mentioned the developments of the PlantPAx system release 2.0 with redundant controllers, redundant I/O modules, redundant field devices, redundant networks, redundant servers and replicated operator workstations for critical control and high-availability applications. Further, he mentioned the embedding of technology from Pavilion Technologies, acquired in 2007, more deeply into the PlantPAx system.