Matthias Fischer

Brussels, Belgium
Matthias Fischer, the managing director of Toyota Material Handling Deutschland, has been appointed president of Toyota Material Handling Europe (TMHE), effective from 15 February. Fischer has extensive materials handling experience, covering sales, marketing, after-sales and technical services, gained through positions with Jungheinrich. He has served as managing director in Italy and was part of the Jungheinrich board, responsible for sales and marketing.

Håkan Dahllöf, the current president of TMHE who is credited as "one of the prime architects" of the structure of the Toyota Material Handling Group, and TMHE have mutually agreed that it would be "a natural step" to go their separate ways as the company enters a new phase.

Farmington Hills, MI, United States
Jervis B Webb Company, a subsidiary of Daifuku Webb Holding Company, has appointed two new vice presidents of project management - Bill Kline for airport baggage handling and
Tom Pawlowicz for factory/distribution automation. Both were previously executive directors of project management.

Kline has over 22 years' experience in the baggage handling industry and over 11 years at Webb. Before joining Webb, Kline was vice president and partner of a leading baggage handling system consulting firm.

Pawlowicz has been in the industrial automation industry for 35 years and has spent 13 of those years at Webb. Prior to Webb, Pawlowicz was engineering department leader at Overhead Crane and Service, operations manager at Siemens and program manager at Andersen and Associates Integrated Systems Division.

Salt Lake City, UT, United States
Daifuku America Corp, a subsidiary of Daifuku Webb Holding Company and provider of innovative materials handling solutions, has appointed Ryan Petrie as systems sales engineer for Daifuku America's factory and distribution automation team. Petrie has over 18 years of experience in the automated materials handling industry. Prior to joining Daifuku, he was account manager at Dematic/HK Systems and Portman Equipment. He will be responsible for expanding the company's automated storage and retrieval system, and conveyor business in North America.