Ralf W. Dieter

Ralf W. Dieter, Chairman of the Board of Management of Dürr AGspoke in his presentation "Focusing as a way out of the crisis" about success factors for profitable growth using the example of Dürr AG, a leading global supplier of products and services for automotive manufacturing.

Ralf W. Dieter has been Chairman of the Board of Management of Dürr AG since January 2006. Dürr is a leading global company that manufactures and markets products, services and systems for the automotive industry.

Since Dürr AG went public in 1989, the company has grown continuously through acquisitions and the gradual expansion of its product range. Today the company, headquartered in Stuttgart, has 5,650 employees in 21 countries worldwide. Ralf W. Dieter's most important tasks include increasing profitability by improving the efficiency of internal processes and expanding the high-margin service business and turnkey expertise.

Before Ralf. W. Dieter joined Dürr AG, his career path took him through various companies. He was sole Managing Director at DAT AG in Ratingen before moving to IBM in 1995, where he was initially Head of Sales for Central Europe and later Director of Channel Sales for the EMEA region. From there, Ralf Dieter moved to Carl Zeiss Industrielle Messtechnik GmbH in 1999, where he was Chairman of the Management Board. In 2003, he became CEO of Carl Schenk AG in Darmstadt (a subsidiary of Dürr AG) before being appointed CEO of Dürr AG in January 2006.

Ralf Dieter graduated with a degree in economics from the Universities of Karlsruhe and Freiburg.

In his contribution to the 15th Munich Management Colloquium, Ralf W. Dieter will address the topic of "Focusing as a way out of the crisis" and examine the question of whether the "lean paradigm" leads to profitable growth and what contribution Dürr AG's products and services make to lean value creation structures.

Status: Beginning of 2008