Today, Emerson Process Management is an automation vendor focused on field devices, but its plan for the future involves technologies that are just over the horizon. To get there, Emerson decided it needed some extra vision. That's why the group, a division of St. Louis-based Emerson, recently created the position of chief strategic officer. And who better to fill that role than Peter Zornio, a 21-year veteran of the process industry who has spent his entire career at Emerson's competitor, Honeywell.
Zornio, most recently director of product marketing at Honeywell, where he was responsible for control systems, safety systems, MES, and asset management software, will now direct strategic technology investments and acquisitions at Emerson Process Management. In his new role he reports directly to Emerson Process Management president John Berra and will manage a cross-functional technology team within the company.
Despite his ties to Honeywell, Zornio said the Emerson CSO position was an offer he couldn't refuse. "It's a big change for me," Zornio told Managing Automation. "A little bit of leaving the nest, but I couldn't say no."
Zornio says he will now be able to think out of the box, while firmly planted in an industrial company that makes process management its priority.
The Emerson Process Management group generated $4.9 billion in sales in fiscal 2006 -- about a quarter of the parent company's $20 billion. At Honeywell, Zornio worked for Process Solutions, a group embedded within the Automation and Control Solutions (ACS) Group. Overall, ACS contributed $11 billion in sales to the diversified company's overall $31.4 billion in fiscal 2006, but Process Solutions is just a blip on Honeywell's radar screen.
"From 21,000 feet, when you look at the size of the business compared to everything else going on at Honeywell, the group is not on the forefront of [CEO] Dave Cote's mind every day," Zornio says. "A large part of why this change occurred for me is the amazing opportunity to have a direct influence over what happens with the largest player in automation right now."
Zornio, who has relocated his family to Austin from Phoenix, says his job is to "figure out the next big thing." Right now, it's all about wireless, he says. What's next? That's to be determined. Or, perhaps, he's just not revealing that right now. He is, after all, the CSO, and it's a matter of competitive strategy.
This article originally appeared in the March 2007 issue of Managing Automation.