PI North America was founded as the PROFIBUS Trade Organization in 1994 and was generally known as simply PTO. Although an autonomous non-profit trade organization, PTO renamed itself to PI North America to more closely identify with the international umbrella organization, PI (PROFIBUS & PROFINET International).
PI North America is dedicated to supporting industry in achieving beneficial results using the PROFIBUS, PROFINET, IO-Link, and omlox technologies. PI North America also assists device manufacturers in the development and marketing of PROFIBUS, PROFINET, IO-Link, and omlox products.
Over 1,500 companies organized into 27 Regional PI Associations develop and supply fieldbus and Industrial Ethernet solutions for cost efficient and highly reliable automation.
The PI Community
PI is the largest industrial networking standards organization in the world and it is the umbrella organization responsible for the PROFIBUS, PROFINET, IO-Link, and omlox technologies. Its standardization efforts and commitment to openness have guaranteed leading-edge, certified-interchangeable products from an enormous range of suppliers. It has been doing business with PROFIBUS since 1989 and a measure of its success is that there are over 70 million PROFIBUS devices in use today. First PROFINET specifications became available in 2002 and there are more than 70 million PROFINET devices installed today. IO-Link was brought into the organization in 2009 and to date more than 50 million IO-Link devices have been installed worldwide. The location tracking technology omlox joined PI in 2020, creating growth in new markets like intralogistics.
Membership
As one of those 27 local PROFIBUS and PROFINET organizations, PI North America, a non-profit, member organization, is responsible for North America. Members of PI North America are vendors of hardware, software and systems, as well as end users and operators, scientific institutes, universities, distributors, and system integrators. PI North America supports its members with a range of services such as joint marketing projects, road shows, training classes, product certification, strategy meetings and webinars.
Board of Directors
PI North America is governed by a Board of Directors that advises the organization and helps shape long-term strategy.
Josh Fankhauser | Analog Devices
Josh Fankhauser is Senior Manager of Product Line Management for Analog Devices' Industrial Automation business unit. Based out of San Jose, CA, he leads ADI’s strategies on IO-Link and Industrial I/O, providing industry-leading silicon solutions for customers across the factory automation and process control markets.
Josh joined ADI in 2017. He has a Bachelors of Science degree in Physics from California Polytechnic University - San Luis Obispo and a Masters of Science degree in Material Science and Engineering from UCLA.
Darrell Halterman | Emerson
Darrell Halterman is the Director of PACSystems Controls and Compute for Emerson’s Controls & Software business unit. The business is headquartered in Charlottesville, VA providing a broad portfolio of automation products and solutions including PLC/PAC controls and industrial I/O, motion and safety controls and devices, operator interfaces and industrial PCs, industrial Ethernet and power devices, and edge devices and solutions.
Darrell joined the Controls & Software business in 2000 and has held a variety of roles of increasing responsibility including Embedded Systems Developer, Project Manager, Global Program Manager, Engineering Manager, and Product Manager and now leads the product strategy development and deployment for the PACSystems portfolio.
Darrell holds several patents and earned a Bachelor Of Science in Computer Engineering from Virgina Tech and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from James Madison University.
Victor Wolowec | Hilscher
Victor Wolowec is National Distribution Channel Sales Manager at Hilscher North America since 2012. A native of Philadelphia, PA, he earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Penn State University and later an MBA from Indiana Wesleyan University.
Throughout his career, Victor has served in many various roles such as Project Engineer, Inside Sales Management, Regional Sales Management, VP of Operations and Logistics, VP of Solutions Business and General Manager and has served on the Board of Directors of PI for 2 years previously being appointed in 2008. He has spent most of his career in Industrial Automation but Victor’s passion is in creating results oriented organizations that thrive. Starting from the ground up, Victor built an extensive North American distribution channel for Hilscher’s end-user products including gateways and PC cards.
He currently resides in Indiana and enjoys spending time with his family which includes his wife of over 37 years, three children and soon to be 5 grandchildren.
Michael Bowne | PI North America
Michael Bowne is the Executive Director and Chairman of the Board of PI North America.
He has been involved with industrial automation for more than 15 years. Mr. Bowne was elected as Chairman in 2024 and has been the Executive Director since 2015. He first joined PI North America in 2011 as the Technical Marketing Director. Mr. Bowne also has the pleasure of serving as the the Deputy Chairman of PROFIBUS & PROFINET International (PI) on a global scale. Prior to PI, Mr. Bowne was a Product Manager at POSITAL FRABA, a producer of rotary encoders.
Mr. Bowne is the Vice President of Panoramix Services LLC, a corporation specializing in marketing, administrative, and technical services for trade associations.
He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from The Pennsylvania State University.
Bernd Raithel | Siemens
Bernd Raithel is the Director of Product Management & Marketing and Deployment of New Technologies in the Factory Automation business unit of Siemens Industry. He has more than 20 years of experience with Siemens in Factory Automation, creating products that help improve production and machines.
Prior to joining Siemens, Mr. Raithel worked for nine years in various positions in R&D developing real-time software and in automating machines and production lines.
Bernd has an engineering degree (Dipl-Ing(FH)) from TH Nürnberg (Germany).