PI North America, the non-profit trade organization for Profibus and Profinet technologies in North America, announces the appointment of Ken Hoover, president of Softing North America, to its Board of Directors. The board voted unanimously to approve Mr. Hoover’s nomination and he plans to attend his first board meeting later this year.
PI North America is a non-profit, member-supported automation organization for fieldbus and Industrial Ethernet dedicated to supporting the discrete and process industries in achieving beneficial results using these networks. It is one of 27 regional associations that make up the global PI community.
Hoover says, “Softing has been involved with Profibus from the very beginning with embedded solutions for the technology. Now with the growing adoption of Profinet, we want to be an integral part of its success in North America.” Softing’s product portfolio also includes interface cards/gateways, network monitoring tools, and OPC solutions.
As president of Softing’s North American operations, Hoover is responsible for overseeing all development, marketing and sales activities at Softing for the USA and Canada. Prior to joining Softing in 2001, Ken also held management positions with IDT (now Eaton), was general manager of GN Telematic (U.S. Subsidiary of GNT in Denmark), and was VP of sales and marketing at Nematron.
Michael Bryant, executive director of PI North America says, “Softing brings a unique perspective to the board. One that we look forward to incorporating into our existing plans. [Softing] can now play a pivotal role in determining the strategic direction of Profibus and Profinet in North America, and Ken’s leadership will help us expand the efforts of our board to bring the technologies to an even wider market.”
Hoover joins fellow board members Mike Bryant, Bernie Anger of GE Intelligent Platforms, Raj Batra of Siemens Industry and Mike Rothwell of Phoenix Contact.
Established in 1989, PI has more than 1,400 members, who have developed and now supply more than 2,500 devices.
For more information, visit www.us.profinet.com
