Automation Media's Writers - A new breed of Data-Driven Manufacturers
Our contributors are actual professionals working in industry with unmatched understanding of operational technology and asset connectivity.
Yoav Kutner
Yoav Kutner is the Founder and CEO of Oro, Inc.
Prior to founding Oro and building OroCommerce, OroCRM, and OroPlatform products, he was the CTO and Co-Founder of Magento, where he led product and technology development for all Magento offerings from inception until after its acquisition by eBay, Inc.
He is a proven product visionary in the business application market. He received a Bachel......
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Wade Mattar
Wade Mattar has been involved in flow measurement research and development, as well as applications for more than 30 years.
He has earned various patents, including several in the area of Coriolis mass flow, and has been a guest speaker at numerous international professional technical seminars, addressing trends in flow measurement.......
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Vikrant Angia
Vikrant Angia is the founder and CEO of VCO Systems.
He loves the challenges of streamlining processes, increasing efficiencies and handling rapid changes in demand profiles across multiple channels using Light Directed Technologies.
His passion is to design and build products applying latest technologies to fuel easier adoption and acce......
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Travis Smith
Travis Smith is the CTO and Founder of WithoutWire Inventory Sciences.
He is a graduate of NDSU school of Electrical Engineering and resides in Maple Grove, MN with his wife and 8 children.
In 1998, he co-founded Inetium, a software development consulting firm and branche......
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Tony Paine
Tony Paine is the Executive VP/CTO and Co-Owner of Kepware Technologies; Tony joined Kepware in 1996 and has been pivotal in the architectural development of all Kepware products, including its flagship product, KEPServerEX.
Tony is responsible for Engineering Development, Quality Assurance and Customer Support. His attention to detail and the engineering process is key to delivering technolog......
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Thomas R. Cutler
Thomas R. Cutler is the President and CEO of Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based, TR Cutler, Inc., celebrating its 23rd year.
Cutler is the founder of the Manufacturing Media Consortium including more than 9000 journalists, editors, and economists writing about trends in manufacturing, industry, material handling, and process improvement.
TR Cutler, Inc. launched two new divisions focusing on G......
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Soren Block Olsen
Soren Block Olsen, the Director of Marketing at TARGIT Business Intelligence & Analytics, works with data-rich marketing systems providing him with first-hand insight into customer and market behavior.
Olsen specializes in designing processes and systems to collect and turn data into useful information that supports business. He thrives on being where IT meets business, surrounded by people wh......
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Seth Patin
Seth Patin is the Founder and CEO of LogistiVIEW, a software company that uses artificial intelligence and augmented reality on industrial smart glasses to improve the productivity and job satisfaction of task-oriented workers. Since starting his career at supply chain softwa......
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Scott Heide
Scott Heide, Founder, CEO, Engineering Intent
With more than 30 years of experience in knowledge-based engineering software, Heide has long been a key source for industry understanding of and application strategies for engineering and sales automation. Heide drove t......
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Sam Bradbury
Sam Bradbury is a managing partner of Ergonomics International. Bradbury is an international speaker and instructor on the topics of functional capacity, ergonomics, human factors, injury reduction, and engineered solutions for improved workplace quality, efficiency, and human error reduction. Expertise includes testing and measuring the physical demands of work as well as return to work testing c......
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Ryan Brown and Ed Brown
The engineering foundation of migrating from a fork truck material flow to Fork Truck Free http://forktruckfree.com/ operational efficiencies are represented by Topper Industrial (www.topperindustrial.com) Founder Ed Brown and son Ryan Brown, President of the Wisconsin-based industrial cart FTF revolution. Ed Brown is considered the father of the North American fork truck free (FTF) movement. In 1......
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Robert Bova
Robert Bova has served as the President and CEO of AccuSpeechMobile for 12 years, successfully introducing the innovative AccuSpeechMobile voice solution to the marketplace from the company's early years, to today, the fastest growing mobile workforce voice productivity company.
Bova works closely with the leadership of a growing number of fortune class customers, understanding customer obj......
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Rob Sullivan
Rob Sullivan, AutoGuide Mobile Robots' President and CEO is a proven robotics and automation leader with a solid track record of pioneering innovative products.
With over thirty years of career advancement in high technology companies ranging from burgeoning start-ups to established multinational corporations, he offers a rare combination of business leadership and engineering expertise th......
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Rick Zabel
Rick Zabel has been Vice President of Automation Resources, Inc. since it's inception in 2000 and was a driving force behind the initial Automationtechies.com web site.
Today, Rick manages the Automation.com web site business, acts as editor-in-chief, and is responsible for advertising and marketing of the web site and services. In addition, Rick works closely with advertisers to tailor online......
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Randy Kondor
Randy Kondor, President, OPC Training Institute, has more than 15 years of leadership experience building global OPC and security awareness and acceptance. An accomplished engineer, his vision and capable expertise have been a driving force in making the OPC Training Institute the world's largest OPC training company.
Randy's success is due to the priority he has placed on educating industry ab......
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Randy Blaylock
Randy Blaylock, VP of Sales for eFlex Systems, has over 30 years of consultative selling experience and has a well-established reputation as a top solution sales professional and team leader.
He has many years of experience in engineered manufacturing and material handling equipment, which gives him an extensive understanding of manufacturing processes and related material movement throughout......
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Rachel Snyder
Rachel Snyder is currently studying Mass Communications at Boston University. As a Generation Z individual herself, Snyder has a unique understanding of the role of social media among her peers; her analysis examines how it impacts the lives, decisions, and actions of fellow Gen Z thinkers. Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok are more than resources but rather the answer to reaching her generation. Th......
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Peter Chipkin
Peter Chipkin, has worked in the control and automation industry since 1988. Industry experience ranges through mining, food and beverage and building controls. Career highlights includes team leader in the development of the world’s first ISA SP88 compliant PLC programming tool called Magus, automation of the process plant at Red Dog Mine in Alaska, leading his own staff in the development of ove......
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Nimit Patel
Nimit Patel, CEO of Hydraulic Manifolds USA, brings innovation to the manufacture of custom and standard hydraulic manifolds or HIC, Hydraulic Integrated Circuits. Companies with difficult custom design challenges rely on engineering teams who bring almost 50 years of experience.
Established 1971, as Selling Precision, the company grew steadily until relocating to its current state-of-the-art ......
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Nathan Pocock
Nathan Pocock entered the Automation Industry in 1995, leaving an IT admin position, to join Siveco UK - a Computer Maintenance Management System company - as a trainer and consultant. After leaving the UK for the USA in 1999, Nathan became a technology instructor at the ECPI College of Technology before re-entering the automation industry in 2001 working for Software Toolbox, and was heavily invo......
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Naeem Ismat
Naeem Ismat is no stranger to the automation, control and quality assurance industries and has a diverse background. He enjoys being a part of his client's successes. Currently, operational applications/technology, prodcuts analysis/review and projects management is the niche he has found that allows him to do just that.
Naeem, Master of Engineering from McMaster Univeristy, has been working in......
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Mike Mills
Mike Mills, Director, Business Consulting, Blue Ridge
As a subject matter expert with 20+ years of supply chain expertise, Mike adds value to Blue Ridge by providing his expertise throughout the sales process.
Mike treats each sale as an opportunity to challenge the ......
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Mike Kotzian
Mike Kotzian is currently the Managing Director of Kivnon USA, a leading Automated Guided Vehicle supplier with Farmington Hills, Michigan headquarters.
He has over 20 years of experience in the AGV industry in various leadership roles. He has a special interest in the history and evolution of the AGV with a passionate look to the future.
Follow KivnonUSA on
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Mike Franz
Mike Franz is the founder and creator of the WorkCenter from ManufacturingPower, a cloud-based market intelligence solution designed to help small to mid-sized companies streamline and
achieve real-time visibility into Industrial Supply spend, collaborate better with suppliers, mitigate risk, and realize significant cost savings.
Contact: (612) 655-5628.......
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Miguel Pereira
Miguel Pereira is a mechanical engineer with his focus centered in the world of automation training and education. He is
a co-founder and Communication Manager of the Portuguese company Real Games Lda (www.realgames.pt).
Real Games clearly aims to be a leader in the 3D simulation sector of the education and training software marketplace.
......
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Matt Rendall
Matt Rendall is CEO and Co-Founder of OTTO Motors where he is responsible for developing the strategic commercialization of self-driving vehicle technologies,
as well as the strategic vision for the company. His thought leadership brought
the company early success, along with a variety of accolades including the Ernst
& Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Young Entrepreneur and Business......
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Marla Keene
Marla Keene is a tech writer working with AX Control, Inc, a global supplier of industrial automation parts.
Marla writes about advances occurring within the power, tech, and manufacturing sectors. Her articles have been featured on AutomationMedia.com, JaxEnter.com, Medium, ......
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Mark Heidebrecht
Mark Heidebrecht is a managing partner of Ergonomics International. He has provided forensic and expert witness services in the areas of biomechanics, human factors, ergonomics, and work physiology.
He has testified in over 75 State Court and United States Federal Court cases as an expert witness and presented testimony at the Federal OSHA hearing regarding the National Ergonomic Standard. Hei......
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Manny Mandrusiak
Manny Mandrusiak is working as Director of Technology Marketing at PROFIBUS Trade Organization (PTO) and also Vice President of OPC Marketing at OPC Foundation.
As an occasional writer and guest editor, Manny contributes to popular industrial technology site - AutomationMedia.com. His thoughts/views/experiences appear in Editor’s Ramblings section. He is also acts as a guest speaker at technolo......
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Julian Seume
Julian Seume is the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) for the German-based inductive wireless power company Wiferion. He holds a Bachelor in Economics and a Master of Sciences in Business Management.
After ten years in international executive positions for machine tool compa......
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Jouni Aro
M.Sc(Tech) Jouni Aro is a software developer and OPC specialist. He graduated from the Helsinki University of Technology at 1999 specializing in Information and Automation Technology. He joined Prosys PMS Ltd at 1996 as a partner and has since been working there as a Software Manager.
Jouni Aro has over 10 years of experience in automation software development, including agile software proje......
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Jorg Lorscheider
Jorg Lorscheider, Chief Marketing Officer, Syncroness Inc, has been involved with product development for the past 18 years. His experience ranges from working in corporations as a director of product development as well as marketing.
Over the last 7 years, Jorg has been a managing partner at Syncroness a provider of new product development services. Syncroness is playing a significant r......
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John Murdoch
John Murdoch is CEO of Alfacon Solutions Ltd., based in Canada. Murdoch is a thought-leader in both the manufacturing and materials handling sectors. Leveraging more than a quarter century of experience, Murdoch brings a unique perspective to engineered material handling solutions and the role of automation. Murdoch can be reached at jo......
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John Hayes
John Hayes is a solutions-finder for the material handling industry. For more than twenty years he has been evaluating, designing, developing, and
implementing innovative software and hardware solutions for businesses in high-volume retail, wholesale (B2B), and direct-to-consumer (B2C) distribution systems.
Hayes is a 2014 Supply & Demand Chain Executive "Pros to Know" recipient with vast an......
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John Hayes
John Hayes, Vice-President of Sales and Logistics for
Vecna Logistics, is a widely-respected thought leader for the manufacturing,
distribution, and materials handling industries. For more than twenty years he has
been evaluating, designing, developing, and implementing innovative software and
hardware solutions, with a particular focus in the AGV......
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John Hayes
John Hayes, Director of Sales for Balyo USA.
Hayes is a widely-respected thought leader for the manufacturing, distribution, logistics, and materials handling industries.
For more than twenty years Hayes has been evaluating, designing, developing, and implementing innovative......
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Jim Pinto
Founder (formerly President & CEO) of Action Instruments Technology Futurist, Angel Investor, Speaker, Writer, Industrial Automation Commentator, Analyst & Consultant.
Since its inception in 1972, Jim Pinto was President and CEO of Action Instruments based in San Diego, CA. USA. In March of '98, Action was acquired by Eurotherm (UK), which in turn was acquired by Invensys in June '98.
......
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Jay Snow
Jay Snow, Marketing Manager at MTI System, is a freelance writer most
notable for writing manufacturing cost estimating blogs.
Jay is new to the on-line writing world and always looking for suggestions,
comments and even questions for existing or future work.
......
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Jason Rourke
Jason Rourke, Marketing Manager for ProfitKey International, has 5 years of creative marketing experience with a BA in Marketing Communications from the University of New Hampshire. He is responsible for all inbound and outbound marketing duties including, but not limited, to social media networking, writing the company's blog "Navigating ERP", and e-mail campaigns.......
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James Powell
As Product Manager, Communications, James Powell provides technical expertise and leadership on industrial communications for Siemens Milltronics level measurement instrumentation. In 2009, he wrote a book with Henry Vandelinde entitled ‘Catching the Process Fieldbus – An Introduction to PROFIBUS for Process Automation’.
He has extensive knowledge of common industrial networks and in depth exp......
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Jack Smylie
Jack Smylie is the North America Sales Manager at Ancra Systems. Ancra Systems supplies material handling systems for automatic truck loading and unloading and the connection to new or existing internal transport conveyors. Leading clients include DHL, Toyota, Bavaria, Federal Express, Procter & Gamble, and Friesland Foods.
Jack has many years of material handling and industrial packaging exper......
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Herb Isenberg
Herb Isenberg Ph.D, has over 20 years experience in the field of Quality Assurance and Automated Testing. He is often quoted in articles on automated testing, has published in Dr. Dobbs Journal as well as being a frequent conference speaker on all aspects of automated testing.
He currently is the 1st VP of Quality Assurance at Countrywide Mortgage, and prior to that he was the Automation Man......
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George Jewell
George joined eFlex Systems in Rochester Hills, MI in 2011 after 17 years with General Motors Powertrain Manufacturing.
Before leaving GM he was responsible for Powertrain Assembly System Controls and provided leadership for development of a global standard that targeted flexibility. As Vice President at eFlex systems, he manages the product planning, development and support teams. For 25 yea......
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Gabriel Smith
Gabriel Smith is a Six-Sigma Green Belt with 20 years-experience in Pricing and Quote to Cash. He has been in the price optimization software industry for 12 of those years and worked with leading companies across many industries such as 3M, Seagate, IBM, Emerson, and Siemens.
Gabriel started his career at Cisco Systems, where he was part of manufacturing team that structure the Sales BOMs a......
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Frank Madren
Frank Madren formed an investor group and purchased GarrettCom in 1992.
With over 30 years experience in the computing and networking technology industry, much of it in executive management positions, Frank is enjoying the opportunity to run his own show.
Prior to becoming President of GarrettCom, he consulted for venture capital firms and start-ups, and managed product planning and mark......
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Frank Kapper
Frank Kapper is General Manager of Upland Ultriva with over 30 years of progressive experience leading enterprise-level Information Technology (IT) and Operational Excellence initiatives across a diverse set of aviation and manufacturing industries including aerospace and defense, automotive, commercial airlines, industrial and diversified, electronics, and medical devices. Kapper is an expert in ......
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Frank Charles Cozza
Frank Charles Cozza began his success story as the preferred architect for Rite Aid back in 1997. To accommodate a store remodel, the retail chain enlisted Frank's expertise to design a solution for mobilizing fully loaded shelving units.
Over 20 years later, this single idea was the foundation that launched Gondola Skate, the world's leading manufacturer of fixture mobilization systems for t......
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Francois Y. Simon
A Network Communications Project Manager, Wide Area Network (WAN) Architect, and System Designer with twenty years experience with Current and Legacy Technologies and their Associated Protocols.
He is known as innovative Team Leader and Team Player with special strengths in Problem Solving and Analysis. Held various engineering positions related to telecommunications, IT, power metering, an......
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Frances Brunelle
Frances Brunelle is the founder of
Accelerated Manufacturing Brokers, Inc., which specializes in the sale of lower middle market manufacturing companies nationally.
Fran and her team help to ensure the continuity of U.S. Manufacturing by transitioning ......
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Faheem Ismat
Faheem is a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (SQL Server 2008 DBA), Enterprise Application-Operational Data Integration Expert and Application/Database/ETL programmer - kind of pretty versatile IT professional.
He has over 14 years of cross-industry IT experience working with Top 10 Fortune 500 companies including Alcon, ADP and Allegro. He has led many integration projects from conce......
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Eric Murphy
Advanced Architecture System Design Engineer, MatrikonOPC
Eric Murphy, BSc, PEng (Alberta), Eric is a Chemical Engineer with a Process Control specialization and an OPC expert. Eric has been a part of the OPC community since its early beginnings in the mid-1990s. Eric is heavily involved with the OPC Foundation and currently acts as the chair for the OPC Historical Data Access (HDA) working gro......
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Emily Newton
Emily Newton is the Editor-in-Chief at Revolutionized Magazine.
She regularly covers topics on robotics and automation as well as trends in the industrial sector.
For more details, visit Emily Newton ......
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Dane Overfield
Dane Overfield, Product Development Lead, currently leads the development of Exele’s Process Data Analysis, Calculation, and Alarm Notification products. Dane has been with Exele Information System, Inc. since 1991, primarily working with and developing software for process data collection and historian products.
He has been involved with designing and implementing process calculation soluti......
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Chad Smith
Chad Smith, DDPP, DDLP, is a co-founder of the Demand Driven Institute. Mr. Smith spent 20 years in supply chain and management consulting and software co-founding industry innovator Constraints Management Group and working personally with Dr. Eli Goldratt.
He has co-authored and contributed to several books on demand driven methods, MRP and the Theory of Constraints (TOC).......
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Carsten Funke
Carsten Funke is the Chief Sales Officer for Picavi. Since early 2019, Funke took the position of CEO at the US subsidiary, Picavi U.S. Inc., the North American pick-by-vision solution.......
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Carol Ptak
Carol Ptak, CFPIM, CIRM, DDPP, DDLP, is a co-founder and partner with the Demand Driven Institute. Ms. Ptak spent decades in supply chain management first as a practitioner and then as a consultant and software executive.
She is also a past president of APICS, and has authored several books on demand driven methods, MRP, enterprise resource planning, lean, and the theory of constraints (TOC)......
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Carlos Millan
Carlos Millan is the Manager of Business Development and responsible for the all the Americas under Oceaneering International, Inc.'s Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) division. ......
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Bob Erickson
Bob Erickson, is a Senior OPC Solution Architect and electrical Engineer who manages the MatrikonOPC Asia-Pacific business Unit.
Bob is an electrical engineer with a control systems background and has worked at Matrikon for over 5 years within the OPC department. Bob started the OPC division in Australia and has worked with many companies to ensure that they have solid OPC communication
infras......
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Bill Weed
Bill Weed is a Senior Engineer with Gray Matter Systems and has over 20 years experience in the Controls and Automation field.
Mr. Weed has held Senior Engineering and Project Management positions with major companies such as Dupont, Eaton, and Abbott Laboratories; and his work includes developing systems for large plant sites, R&D facilities, and pilot plant operations. Mr. Weed has a B.S. i......
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Barrett Thompson
Barrett Thompson, GM of Commercial Excellence leading Zilliant's Business Solutions Consultant team aligning Zilliant solutions to customer needs. Over the past three decades, he has built and delivered optimization and pricing solutions to Fortune 500 businesses in diverse B2B manufacturing sectors.
......
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Automatoin Media
Automation Media is about enriching your automation and controls web experience as we are one of the few internet-dedicated web publishers.
A brief history...
This site was created in early 1998 as one of the first Automation related sites in the world by Naeem Ismat. Since then both size of the site and the traffic have increased steadily and it has become popular and supper hit resource of ......
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Archibald Putt
Archibald Putt is the pseudonym of a man whose contributions in science, engineering, and R&D management are well known.
He has served on government advisory committees, managed basic and applied research, and held executive positions in a large multinational corporation. He received his PhD degree from a leading institute of technology and has served as president of an international technic......
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Anup Varghese
Anup Varghese is a research analyst at Beroe-Inc, a procurement intelligence company. He has been studying the global automation equipment and services market in order to understand the current trends and technological developments so as to support fortune 500 companies in developing sourcing strategies.
Anup focuses on understanding the procurement trends and best practises across industries. ......
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Andy Legut
Andy Legut is the Midwest Sales Manager for FlexQube, Inc. and the longest running North American employee for FlexQube. He has years of experience working alongside different manufacturing facilities and providing ergonomic, efficient, and safe FlexQube solutions.
Legut is from Grosse Ile, MI (not far from Detroit) so he has grown up with the automotive industry in his blood.
Legut can be re......
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Andrew Schutte
Andrew Schutte, General Manager at
COUNTERPART ETO ERP, has been mechanically inclined from a young age.
Growing up in his father's machine shop he was provided a valuable hands-on education of machining, fabrication, and mechanical design throughout high school.
He moved to designing automation assembly equipment and machine......
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Alice Shepherd
Alice Shepherd resides in Southern California. She holds a Masters and Ph.D. degree in linguistics from the University of California at Berkeley.
She has been a freelance business-to-business journalist for more than 10 years. Her work has been published in over 30 magazines including Frozen Food Age, Management Accounting, Los Angeles Business Journal, Convenience Store News, Managing Autom......
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Adriel Michaud
Adriel Michaud, CNT, is the Lead Solution Architect for MatrikonOPC. Drawing from on-site experience with OPC, along with a previous technical support role, Adriel is the main technical consultant responsible for creating robust systems for industrial connectivity with a team of Solutions Architects.
Currently Adriel is also called upon to lend his expertise toward training new technical supp......
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