A little late, however I just found out that now that John Berra has officially retired, Dr. Gunther Kegel has been elected the chairman of the Fieldbus Foundation Board of Directors. John was chairman for 16 years – basically since the beginning. There are also a number of other changes to the Board as more people named alternates including: Daniel Huber, senior group vice president, business unit manager - open control systems, process automation division, ABB (for Mark Taft); Takuji Hosoya, managing executive officer - advanced automation company, Azbil (Yamatake); Peter Zornio, chief strategic officer, Emerson Process Management (for John Berra); and Ralph Carter, president, Rockwell software business, Rockwell Automation.
What is not shown here is that with the recent retirement of Joe Duffy, Emerson has also recently passed the chairmanship of the Technical Steering Committee (TSC) on to Dave Glanzer (FF) and Matt Schreir (Honeywell) who will co-chair this committee which is responsible for the review, approval, and maintenance of the technical specifications on which FF is based.
Does this changing of the guard also represent a change of focus for Emerson the original “champions of Fieldbus?” I am sure the ‘official’ word will be a resounding “no, we are fully behind this protocol” but of course with CHARMS and Wireless as the new rallying cries only time will tell.
Congratulations and good luck to all the new members of these Boards.