In Business

Staff -- Control Engineering, 9/1/2000

• Invensys plc (London, U.K.) and Wonderware Corp. (Irvine, Calif.) announced on Aug. 10 that Joe Cowan was appointed president and ceo of Wonderware, effective immediately. Wonderware is an operating unit of Invensys'Industrial Software and Services Division. Mr. Cowan replaces Roy Slavin, Wonderware's ceo since 1995. Mr. Slavin will continue in a consulting role at Wonderware until his contract with Invensys expires on April 1, 2001.
• Building on products obtained from its M2R Technology acquisition, Aspen Technology (Cambridge, Mass.) recently introduced Aspen Electronic Batch Record System (AeBRS), which is designed to fill the manufacturing execution system (MES) needs of life sciences, consumer package goods, and medical device industries. AeBRS is also integrated with the Aspen Manufacturing Suite to enable higher levels of capacity utilization and synchronization with the business and supply chain. For more information, visit www.aspentech.com or www.controleng.com/freeinfo.
• Quatech Inc. (Akron, O.), which manufactures communication, data acquisition, and control products for PC-based systems, announced Aug. 11 that the 17-year-old company has been purchased by a group of Akron-based investors. As a result, Steve Runkel, a 17-year technology industry veteran, was appointed as Quatech's new president and ceo. Mr. Runkel worked most recently at Oracle.
• Galil Motion Control Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.) will move its headquarters on Aug. 22 to a new 30,000-ft2 building in the Atherton Tech Center (Rocklin, Calif.), just east of Sacramento.