M. ten Hompel, A. Kirchheim

At the opening of LogiMAT, Michael ten Hompel announced to the assembled press that he would be leaving his post as Managing Director of Fraunhofer IML on March 31st. A touch of melancholy was evident. He will be succeeded by Alice Kirchheim, an expert in logistics systems technology. She has big shoes to fill.

Over the past decades, Michael ten Hompel, highly decorated as Prof. Dr. Dr. hc., has shaped the logistics industry like no other. From the Internet of Things and shuttle technology to smart devices and robot swarms, he drove the technological development of logistics forward (not to say, practically propelled it forward) and raised it to a new level with his visionary ideas such as the Digital Continuum, the Social Networked Industry, and his AI research. In the truest sense of the Fraunhofer ideal, he succeeded in interlinking science and practice while simultaneously placing logistics research on the agenda of German business and politics.

Alice Kirchheim conducts research and teaches in the field of planning and designing logistics systems. Her focus is on developing solutions for automating logistical handling, transport, and transshipment processes.

After graduating with a degree in Computer Engineering from the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), she initially worked as a research assistant at the Institute for Production and Logistics at the University of Bremen and later at Reutlingen University of Applied Sciences. Her doctoral dissertation focused on the identification of individual items for automated unloading from load carriers. From 2013 to 2019, she held various positions within the KION Group, working in the field of manual and automated logistics systems. She then served as a professor at Aalen University of Applied Sciences. Since March 2021, she has held the Chair of Logistics Systems Technology in Hamburg.

IML/klk.