Invensys Management Musical Chairs

Feb. 5, 2009

Word is out on the street this morning Sudipta Bhattacharya, currently president of Wonderware, has been tapped, at least on an interim basis, to fill the vacant spot left by Paulett Eberhart’s departure from Invensys Process Systems. He will also serve as COO of Invensys’ other industrial automation units, Wonderware and Eurotherm. He will answer directly to Ulf Henriksson.  Jeff Greene, who was president of Eurotherm, is serving as senior vice president in charge of an Industrial Automation integration team

Word is out on the street this morning Sudipta Bhattacharya, currently president of Wonderware, has been tapped, at least on an interim basis, to fill the vacant spot left by Paulett Eberhart’s departure from Invensys Process Systems. He will also serve as COO of Invensys’ other industrial automation units, Wonderware and Eurotherm. He will answer directly to Ulf Henriksson.  Jeff Greene, who was president of Eurotherm, is serving as senior vice president in charge of an Industrial Automation integration team

According to the internal memo, which can be found in full at automation blogger Jim Pinto’s web site http://www.jimpinto.com/weblog/invensyslog.html, here’s the logic behind the move.  Invensys wants to more closely integrate its three automation businesses—IPC, Wonderware and Eurothem—in the hopes of building bigger market share and better servicing its clients. Its strategy is to focus on defining the new market space between the automation and ERP layer—and develop the strategy that will make Invensys the leader in that space.

The first move in this game was the formation of an IA integration team, a cross-functional group drawn from all three businesses, under the leadership of Greene. The making of Bhattacharya interim COO of all three units seems to be step two.

The memo also lays out additional internal moves: Reporting to Bhattachayra and assuming functional responsibilities across the three IA business groups on an interim basis will be:


Phil Clark --SVP of Sales and Marketing
Gerhard Du Plessis —VP of Legal
Wayne Edmunds --VP of Finance and Information Technology
Keri Jolly --VP of Human Resources
Pankaj Mody – VP of Development and Technology
Ron Wichter --SVP of Delivery, Supply Chain and Manufacturing.

The following individuals will report to Bhattachayra in their business-group specific roles:

Ricardo Agostinelli - IPS President for Latin America
Chris Bates - in his interim role leading Eurotherm, as announced last week.
Steve Blair - IPS President for North America
Rashesh Mody - currently VP of Product Marketing at Wonderware, who will take Sudipta’s place leading Wonderware on an interim basis.
Franco Restelli - VP for Global Technical Competitiveness

Henriksson is also rearranging some of the geographical divisions at IPS. According to the memo, the APAC and Middle East Regions (the latter including Libya and Egypt) will be merged. The EURA region will now include Europe, Russia and Africa (excluding Libya and Egypt). Nabil Kassem, who has been leading the Middle East Region for IPS. will lead the new APAC/ME Region. Lawrence Wee, who was leader of the IPS APAC region, will be leaving at the end of February. Stuart Batchelor will continue as Interim leader of IPS’ EURA region. Both Kassem and Batchelor will report to Bhattachayra.

Don’t miss the next exciting episode.