David Darbant

VP of Field Service Krones Inc.

I’m David Darbant, Vice President of Krones Field Service for North America. Krones, based out of Germany, is the largest worldwide supplier of filling and packaging equipment for the beverage and food industry with annual revenues over 5B EUR. The group I manage consists of approximately 400 team members performing a variety of functions including project management, equipment installation, machine retrofitting, planned maintenance, troubleshooting and remote customer support. I’m primarily responsible for Strategic Planning, P&L performance and overseeing Daily Operations for the group. I’ve held a variety of positions throughout my career including engineering, project, and business management. I started off my career at the age of 18 as a process piping designer in the petrochemical industry. I followed that with several years in the pulp & paper and pharma industries before moving into the Beverage and Food industry. Although I spent close to 15 years in the process piping arena, I was around packaging lines most of my career. That allowed for an easy transition to managing turnkey bottling and packaging line projects for Krones in 2004. Digitalization and Data Analytics is an area where I enjoy focusing a significant amount of my time. The real time data that is available from various systems today combined with the advances in analytical software allows me to transform that data into a meaningful and visible narrative for others. Being able to take daily operations issues and correlate them to strategic decisions and solutions directly benefits our customers as well as making our business and Field Service team stronger.