PLCopen Board of Management Announces Changes

Summary

On June 28, PLCopen had a successful annual General Meeting in Amsterdam. Part of the meeting related to elections in the Board of Management. We are pleased to announce that: 

Manfred Werner of Codesys was re-elected as member of the Board of Management and as Treasurer.

Boris Waldeck of Phoenix Contact has taken up other responsibilities within his company and left the Board of Management. His colleague Carsten Weber was instead elected as member of the Board of Management and as Secretary. He is the head of product management for Software and Safety at Phoenix Contact Electronics located in Lemgo, Germany. He started to work with IEC 61131-3 engineering software in 1999 as a service and support employee and did also PLCopen certified standard IEC 61131-3 trainings at customers for Phoenix Contact Blomberg. In 2003 he moved to the daughter company KW-Software as a service and support technician and later to the technology sales department.

Since 2012 Carsten is the responsible product manager at Phoenix Contact for IEC 61131-3 compliant engineering tools. “I got in touch with the PLCopen organization very soon after I started to support IEC 61131-3 compliant engineering software and was at first very impressed about the PLCopen XML specification. Now this became part 10 of the IEC 61131. That is one of the ideal examples of how effective and important this organization is. It is absolutely an honour for me to become a member in the board of this organization to help to improve automation engineering in the future!," said Carsten Weber. 

End 2021 Steffen Stang of Siemens took on new responsibilities outside his company and left the PLCopen Board of Management.

Dr. Efrossini Tsouchnika was proposed and elected as new member of the Board of Management. She is managing the Business Line Software and Virtual Control and the System Line Industrial Communication at Siemens based in Erlangen, Germany. She joined Siemens in 2008 as a research engineer for Digital Twins and later led various projects and teams. In 2018 she moved to the Process Solutions Business Unit (today Siemens Energy) as the head of strategy & digitalization, with the responsibility for project execution for digitalization business.

As of 2022, Tsouchnika is responsible for the SW Controller and the Industrial Communication business within Siemens, Digital Industries, Factory Automation, Control. “From my past in the solution business I know how important interoperability and standardized libraries are for control programming. I am happy to join the PLCopen Board of Management and to contribute to further defining open standards," said Efrossini Tsouchnika.
 
PLCopen sincerely thanks the parting members for their work as member of the Board of Management and welcomes the new Board members. We look forward to our cooperation in the coming years.

About PLCopen

PLCopen was founded in 1992 as an independent worldwide association for industrial suppliers and users. It is the leading association resolving topics related to industrial control programming. PLCopen creates concepts to reduce the costs of industrial automation. These cost savings are realized in areas such as engineering, training, operation and maintenance. Together with its members, PLCopen creates specifications to materialize these concepts.