Dr. Harald Proff

Dr. Harald Proff, Lead Partner Operations Germany at Deloitte, spoke on the topic "Cost savings through networked and digital value creation structures".

Deloitte Consulting is part of Deloitte GmbH, based in Düsseldorf. It was founded in 1946 and currently has over 5000 employees and a turnover of almost €800 million. Over 200,000 people work for Deloitte worldwide. The total turnover in the 2013/2014 financial year amounted to over 32 billion US-$. This makes it the largest auditing company in the world.

Dr. Harald Proff studied industrial engineering and mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt, where he also completed his doctorate. He then worked as a manager for industrialization projects at Mercedes Benz before moving into consulting. Dr. Proff initially worked at McKinsey for 11 years - most recently as a Partner for Manufacturing in the European Operations Practice. He is now Lead Partner Operations Germany at Deloitte Consulting, where his work focuses on comprehensive transformation programmes and new business models in industrial manufacturing as well as increasing digitalization and networking. In addition to Germany, he has also lived and worked in South Korea and Brazil. In his presentation, Dr. Proff discusses how the hype surrounding Industry 4.0 has not yet reached operational reality. "Simply superior" is still more attractive to companies than new complexity. This is why additional investment in networked value creation structures must bring significant savings - and he wants to show how this can be achieved.

Status: Beginning of 2016