B&R's John Kowal elected to PMMI board of directors

Kowal is the first Supplier Member to be elected to the PMMI board, a recognition both of the key role that suppliers play in the advancement of packaging technology, and of the contributions Kowal has made over the past decade of involvement.

He believes the honor is an opportunity for all suppliers to help advance PMMI's mission. He also feels a responsibility to give back to the packaging community.

B&R formed a Global Packaging Solutions group in 2010, providing a focused technical support capability for packagers and packaging machinery providers worldwide. Automation is a key enabling technology for packaging machinery. B&R was the PMMI Student Competition and Education Pavilion sponsor at PACK EXPO 2011. The company regularly sponsors a number of PMMI events.

Kowal is currently a member of the PMMI Global Marketing Committee and Trade Show Strategy Committee. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Organization for Machine Automation & Control (OMAC), an organization promoting standards and best practices in automation that is allied with PMMI. He was instrumental in the founding of the OMAC Packaging Workgroup over ten years ago and has been an active member ever since.