Change in “Managing Director

FDT Group, an inter­na­tion­al indus­try asso­ci­a­tion that sup­ports the devel­op­ment of FDT® tech­nol­o­gy, announced that Steve Bie­gac­ki has been appoint­ed to suc­ceed him as Man­ag­ing Direc­tor. Glenn Schulz, who has held the posi­tion for 13 years, announced his retire­ment ear­li­er this year, effec­tive at the end of 2021.

Steve Bie­gac­ki will join the com­pa­ny as vice pres­i­dent of mar­ket­ing effec­tive Nov. 1, 2021, to pro­vide strat­e­gy, plan­ning and col­lab­o­ra­tion with exist­ing lead­er­ship and work groups to ensure a seam­less tran­si­tion when he assumes the role of gen­er­al man­ag­er on Jan. 1, 2022.

Bie­gac­ki has spent more than 30 years in lead­er­ship roles in and with man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies in sales, mar­ket­ing and busi­ness man­age­ment, devel­op­ing and imple­ment­ing strate­gies to cre­ate mar­ket aware­ness and growth. He has been involved in the devel­op­ment, man­u­fac­tur­ing and deploy­ment of tech­nolo­gies and solu­tions. Most recent­ly, Bie­gac­ki served as Direc­tor, Man­age­ment Advi­so­ry Ser­vices for BDO, where he worked with indus­try clients to help them improve their busi­ness­es by help­ing them under­stand their mar­ket and oppor­tu­ni­ties, cre­ate goals and action plans, and estab­lish KPIs to mea­sure progress and pro­vide feed­back to ensure planned results.

Pre­vi­ous roles include CEO at Kramer Elec­tron­ics, vice pres­i­dent of glob­al sales and mar­ket­ing at Belden, and vice pres­i­dent of glob­al com­mer­cial mar­ket­ing at Rock­well Automa­tion. At Rock­well Automa­tion, he also served as busi­ness man­ag­er respon­si­ble for the cre­ation, devel­op­ment and deploy­ment of a uni­fied inter­na­tion­al net­work­ing stan­dard called CIP, which under­lies the DeviceNet®, Con­trol­Net® and EtherNet/IP® protocols.

“Steve is the ide­al leader to deliv­er win-win results for the com­pa­ny through glob­al part­ner­ships and col­lab­o­ra­tion, and to dri­ve har­mo­niza­tion at a time of rev­o­lu­tion­ary change in the automa­tion indus­try. We believe his expe­ri­ence, knowl­edge and pas­sion for the indus­try, cou­pled with the group’s uni­fied posi­tion, will result in con­tin­ued vision­ary focus as we pass the baton to seam­less­ly imple­ment FDT 3.0, the inno­va­tion plat­form for the intel­li­gent enterprise.”

- Lee Lane, Chair­man of the FDT Board of Directors

“I am very excit­ed to join the group’s lead­er­ship team at a piv­otal time for the indus­try and the com­pa­ny,” said Bie­gac­ki. “My pas­sion for indus­tri­al automa­tion and indus­tri­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions is evi­dent. I know automa­tion — the wants and needs of cus­tomers, sup­pli­ers and appli­ca­tions in dri­ves, dis­crete, process and safe­ty. Through­out my career, I have cre­at­ed a uni­fied focus through rela­tion­ship build­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tion. I am excit­ed to return to the stan­dards-based com­mu­ni­ty and work with mem­bers and part­ners to dri­ve a holis­tic approach to vision­ary man­u­fac­tur­ing excel­lence with a focus on advanced automa­tion initiatives.”