Beckhoff USA has appointed Steve Rastberger to take over as the regional director for the Eastern U.S. following the retirement of Graham Harris. Rastberger will leverage his formidable expertise in automation technology and industry trends to drive sales development and market share gains throughout the region. He will grow the region’s team of sales and applications engineers, oversee operations across the East Coast and expand the Beckhoff customer base in strategic industries. 

Rastberger has held many positions in technical sales and management throughout his career. During the last eight of his 20 years at Omron Automation – Americas, he served as director of the solutions and service division, among other positions. Rastberger worked as regional sales manager for automation vendor Unitronics, and then joined Beckhoff as northeast district sales manager in 2020.

“With the advances in automation technology from Beckhoff and the renewed emphasis on innovation across industries, this is an exciting time to take on this new role,” Rastberger said. “We are seeing significant growth with both new and longstanding customers, including numerous applications with XPlanar and advanced IoT concepts. I look forward to guiding the team through a new period of growth, building upon the solid foundation that Graham Harris has provided.”

An industry stalwart, Harris became president of Beckhoff USA in 2003 when the company had just 20 employees, and he led the North American subsidiaries to average 20 percent revenue growth each year. After continuing to play a key role as East region manager since 2014, he retired from a storied career in automation at the end of August 2021.

“Beckhoff USA would not be what it is today without Graham’s contributions as company president and later as regional manager,” said Kevin Barker, president of Beckhoff Automation LLC. “We will miss Graham’s humor and leadership, but we are excited to have Steve take on a larger role. Steve has proven his knowledge and leadership capabilities throughout his career and especially in his time here at Beckhoff, so we are looking forward to the great work he will do for the larger team as regional director.”