Dr.-Ing. Olaf Sauer studied industrial engineering at the University of Karlsruhe. After two years as a PPS organizer in a medium-sized company in Karlsruhe, he moved to the Fraunhofer IPK in Berlin, where he completed his doctorate under Professor Spur in 1996. He then spent four years at Bombardier Transportation, where he was responsible for the introduction of CATIA and new technologies in vehicle production. From 2000, he set up Metroplan Produktion GmbH within the METROPLAN Group, Hamburg, as a consulting and planning company for production, logistics and production control. From 2004 to the end of 2011, Dr. Sauer headed the Control Systems division at Fraunhofer IOSB. Since 2012, he has been Deputy Director of the IOSB and responsible for business development, marketing and sales with a focus on automation. He is a lecturer at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the University of Kassel as well as a member of the board of the Wirtschaftsstiftung Südwest.