Management Team

The Team Leading Simio's Talented Staff

Howard Coltin

Howard Coltin

Chief Executive Officer

Howard is responsible for accelerating Simio's worldwide revenue growth, while building awareness of the company's game changing portfolio of Industry 4.0 simulation and scheduling products. He brings to Simio over two decades of experience in management, sales, marketing, operations, and manufacturing. Howard joins the company from Ansys, Inc., where he held senior leadership roles in sales and operations over his 11-year tenure. Prior to Ansys, he built an impressive track record of growing emerging software technology companies from the ground up. Howard holds a B.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Northeastern University.

Dennis Pegden

C. Dennis Pegden, PhD.

Chief Product Officer

Dennis was the founder and CEO of Systems Modeling Corporation, later purchased by Rockwell Automation. He has held faculty positions at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and The Pennsylvania State University. He led in the development of the SLAM, SIMAN, Arena, and Simio simulation tools. He has co-authored three simulation textbooks and has published papers in a number of fields including mathematical programming, queuing, computer arithmetic, scheduling, and simulation.

Gerrit Zaayman

Gerrit Zaayman

VP Manufacturing Digital Twin Solution

Gerrit completed his Bachelor’s degree in Electronic Engineering. He then went on to specialize in process and workflow simulation and completed advanced courses in process simulation, business process reengineering and artificial intelligence. As part of this process he helped to establishing the leading process, supply chain and workflow simulation business in South Africa providing the Siman and later the Arena simulation systems to the market. He then joined i2 Technologies where he later became the country manager for South Africa. There he was responsible for sales and delivery of i2’s leading supply chain planning and optimization software to large enterprises gaining experience in planning and optimisation from the strategic design level down to detail scheduling. Gerrit also spent time at Softeon, a provider of warehouse management and optimization systems, as director of sales and marketing where he gained valuable experience in the planning and optimization of warehouse operations. Most recently, Gerrit spent the past 7 years at Simio LLC, first as Director scheduling solutions and then became VP of Manufacturing Digital Twin Solutions.

Shelly Barber

Shelly Barber

VP Administration and Finance

Shelly is responsible for financial planning, accounting and contracts for Simio LLC. Before joining Simio, she held the position of Controller at FoodMinds, a consulting firm based out of Chicago, IL. Prior, she served as a Consultant for a Professional Services firm, providing consulting services to small and mid-sized firms in a broad range of industries. Her expertise covers a range of industries including software, public accounting, eTrade, health and nutrition, health care, graphic design, non-profit, oil and gas, textile production, and entertainment.

Dan Vasalani

Dan Vasalani

VP Global Sales

Dan joins Simio after 26 years with Ansys Inc. at which he experienced and helped lead an industry transformation from single physics simulation to full product digital twins. During those years, he had the pleasure to work with small start-up companies beginning their simulation journey all the way up to global leaders in industries spanning medical, aerospace, automotive/transportation, just to name a few. Dan looks to bring this prior experience to continue leading a global digital transformation initiative at Simio LLC where customers get to see firsthand the effect a digital transformation can make on their bottom line. Dan holds a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from West Virginia University.

Gregory Lang

Gregory Lang

VP Software Development

Greg is the Vice President of Software Development at Simio LLC. He brings approximately a decade of software development experience, working as a lead engineer at FedEx and Omnyx and over 6 years of leadership experience servicing as the Director of Research and Development at McKesson Pharmacy Systems, to his role at Simio. His responsibilities include people management the software development team and overseeing the development of Simio products. Greg is an Alumni of La Roche University where he earned a B.S in Computer Science before going on to earn an M.S in Information Systems Management at Robert Morris University.

Cory Crooks

Cory Crooks

VP Software Architecture

Cory is responsible for devising long term design and development plans for Simio's Digital Twin software and its diverse range of Simulation and Scheduling products. His responsibilities also include analyzing software problems to discover root causes and providing solutions for them. He brings approximately two decades of experience building and troubleshooting simulation and automation software products to the table. His experiences include a 6-year stint at Rockwell Automation and 11 years as a senior software engineer at Simio solving the technical challenges users encounter using Simulation and Scheduling software. He joined Simio as a software engineer in 2008 and grew to become an integral part of the software development team over the years. Cory has a B. S. in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh.