Benoît Thooris, a French national, was elected president of UniversalAutomation.Org in May. Prior to that, he served as vice president at Schneider Electric’s U.S. subsidiary. During his more than 20 years with the French technology group, Thooris held various leadership positions in Europe as well as South and North America. Most recently, the 44-year-old served as Vice President in the U.S., where he was responsible for the go-to-market transformation of the regional industrial business. In that role, he was already working intensively to accelerate market acceptance of open and software-defined automation solutions.

In addition to his experience in industrial automation, digital transformation, and global corporate management, Thooris brings an engineering degree from the Grande École ENSAM in Paris to his new role.

“With UAO, we are in the right place at the right time,” emphasizes the newly elected UAO President. “The diverse technological and logistical challenges facing industrial companies around the world, as well as the impact of software and digitalization, make the need for open automation clearer than ever. I am therefore delighted to be able to actively contribute to the transformation of our industry in the future. As UniversalAutomation.Org, we offer a mature and immediately usable technical approach that enables truly fully open, software-defined automation.”

New Members of the Board of Directors

Also in May 2026, the UAO’s Annual General Meeting was held as an online event. During the meeting, two new members were elected to the Board of Directors. Harry He will take over the role of representative for the Kyland Group from Sam Huang. Brad Mozisek will represent Wood on the board going forward.

Harry He © Universal Automation Org

Harry He serves as Deputy General Manager and General Manager of the Smart Control Business Unit at the Kyland Group, a company specializing in industrial internet and network communications. Previously, he held senior positions at Emerson Process Control as Sales Director and at Schneider Electric as Vice President of Process Automation, among other roles.

Brad Mozisek © Universal Automation Org

Brad Mozisek works in Wood’s Digital Integration Group as a Business Manager and Automation and Control Expert. He also serves as Program Manager at Wood’s Open Process Automation Center of Excellence, where he plays a leading role in developing reference architectures and application frameworks. The chemical engineer has more than 19 years of experience with automation projects in the process industry. The British group Wood operates globally as a service provider for process automation and plant engineering.

In addition to Harry He and Brad Mozisek, the eight-member UAO steering committee includes representatives from ASRock Industrial, ExxonMobil, Intel, Kongsberg Maritime, Kyland, Schneider Electric, Wood, and Yokogawa.

The Annual General Meeting also reappointed Gregory Boucaud to serve another two-year term as Chief Marketing Officer of UniversalAutomation.Org. Boucaud, a French national, has been in charge of the organization’s global marketing since 2021.

Automation layer based on IEC 61499

UniversalAutomation.Org provides an independent automation layer for OT components through its implementation of the IEC 61499 automation standard, which is managed as Guarded Source and available to members at no licensing cost. Unlike approaches such as NOA or OPC UA—and thus not in competition with them—the solution enables a fundamental decoupling of automation hardware (PLC) and automation software. This forms the basis for vendor-neutral and significantly more flexible automation based on IEC 61499.

For users, this approach offers the advantage that code, once created, can be reused across different vendors and deployed decentrally on various hardware components. Furthermore, the lifecycles of hardware and software are completely separate, which makes integration and migration processes in particular much easier.

UniversalAutomation.Org now has more than 110 member companies.