Prof. Dr.-Ing. Gunther Reinhart

Academic Career and Research Areas

Already after his studies of mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Munich, Prof. Gunther Reinhart decided to join the iwb and started his successful career with a doctorate at the institute in 1987. This was followed by five years as an executive employee at BMW AG. In 1993 Prof. Reinhart became the holder of the Chair of Industrial Management and Assembly Technology at the iwb and thus returned to his alma mater himself.

The Chair of Industrial Management and Assembly Technology always focuses its scientific work on topics of work design, factory and plant planning, PPS and robotics. In doing so, Reinhart has always taken up new trends, such as the humanization of the working world, the methods of lean production or the digitalization of production, and applied them in a variety of research projects for the benefit of society. The funding volume, which he acquired for this purpose from the DFG and from foundations via state and federal funding to the EU, amounted to over 80 million € in the 27 years.

In Augsburg, he also built up a meanwhile very successful Fraunhofer Institute IGCV with over 150 employees from the production technology user center already existing there.

More recently, Reinhart has been working on the topics of cyber-physical production systems, mobile robots and human-robot cooperation, as well as humans in the factory. Particularly noteworthy is the establishment of a 20-member group of scientists to research processes and systems for battery production.

After 27 years as iwb institute director, since 2002 at the side of Prof. Michael F. Zäh (Chair of Machine Tools and Manufacturing Technology), Gunther Reinhart was retired as of October 1, 2020.

Awards