• Comet (Garbsen, Germany) appoints Jochen Dietel as technical services team leader. Dietel has more than 11 years of experience as a service manager in the field of micro- and nanofocus X-ray inspection. He began his career with Feinfocus in 1994 and became involved with the company's service policies-field maintenance, upgrades and training-for the complete line of X-ray inspection systems.

• Parlec Inc. (Fairport, NY) names Doug Woods president of Parlec International. Woods will be responsible for expanding the company's worldwide growth, specifically in the markets outside of North America. He will manage Parlec's current subsidiaries in Bristol, England, and Nanjing, China, as well as identify and develop the company's operations in other high-growth markets. Woods is the current chairman of the board and past chairman of the custom automated systems group of the Association for Manufacturing Technology. He also is active in the National Tooling & Machining Association, where he has chaired the global marketing committee, and is past president of the Rochester Chapter of the NTMA.

4Daniel Beaudet has been named vice president, quality systems, for ABB Automation Products, Low Voltage Drives (New Berlin, WI). Beaudet will be responsible for providing overall leadership to the continued development of quality systems for the drives operation, which manufactures and ships drives to customers throughout North America.

Also at ABB Automation Products, Low Voltage Drives, Michael Mikolajczak has been named a product line manager. He is responsible for

the growth, strategic planning and lifecycle management of the ACS50, ACS150, ACS350 and ACS550 AC drive product lines. Most recently, he provided business marketing consultancy to global companies based in the United States and Asia.

• Onset Computer Corp. (Bourne, MA) names Gregg Daly director of sales. Daly brings more than 20 years of sales management experience to Onset's senior management team, having most recently served as the company's sales manager. Prior to joining Onset in 1997, he worked for 12 years in the international management consulting field.

• Larson Davis, a division of PCB Piezotronics (Depew, NY), appoints Gregg Novak as North American sales manager. In this position, Novak will be responsible for all Larson Davis sales activities in the United States, Canada and Latin America, managing all direct sales, representatives and distributors of the division's industrial hygiene and acoustic test product lines.

• Mike Shipulski, director of engineering at Hypertherm Inc. (Hanover, NH), has been honored with the DFMA (Design for Manufacture and Assembly) Award as Distinguished Supporter of 2006. DFMA is a program of methods and software, first developed by Boothroyd Dewherst Inc. in 1983, that have dramatically reduced costs, improved product quality and enhanced the competitiveness of many major U.S. manufacturers.

• Applied Manufacturing Technologies Inc. (Orion, MI) appoints Chris Lohr as regional sales manager. Lohr will be responsible for sales in the Midwest and southeast regions of the United States, and has been active in the automation and machinery industries for more than 15 years.