90 / 308
90
Retirements
Willibald A. Günthner
On 30 September 2017, Prof. Willibald A. Günthner,
Ordinarius of the Chair for Materials Handling, Material
Flow, Logistics, entered into retirement.
Willibald A. Günthner can look back on
a long career in logistics. After studying
mechanical engineering from 1973 to
1978, he gained his doctorate at the
Chair and Institute for Materials Hand
ling under Professor Siegfried Böttcher
at the Technical University of Munich.
At the same time, he also completed studies in work and
economic studies. In 1985, Günthner moved to the indus-
trial sector as a technical manager at Max Kettner. After
working for the company for four years, he returned to
academia as professor for materials handling and material
flow at the Technical University in Regensburg. In 1994,
he followed an invitation to join the Technical University of
Munich as Böttcher’s successor in the Chair.
In the newly renamed Chair for Materials Handling, Mate-
rial Flow, Logistics, Günthner placed a stronger research
and teaching focus on material flow and logistics. Key
achievements from his 23 years as a professor at TUM are
research results such as ‘pick by vision’, picking with data
glasses, and more efficient, more reliable crane evaluation
using the NODYA programme. Günthner recognised the
trend towards digitalisation in intralogistics at an early
stage, and was a co-initiator of the concept of an ‘inter-
net of things’ – the basic idea that spawned the fourth
industrial revolution (Industry 4.0).
As well as leading numerous research projects and
research groups, Günthner was also active in the Depart-
ment of Mechanical Engineering and was chairman of
the Bachelor degree examination board. With the goal of
promoting technical logistics as an academic discipline,
he founded the ‘Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft für
Technische Logistik e.V. (WGTL)’, the scientific body for
technical logistics, together with other logistics profes-
sors. Günthner was also involved in the German federal
association for logistics, the ‘Bundesvereinigung für Logis-
tik’ as deputy chairman of the scientific advisory board,
and was also chairman of the board of the ‘Gesellschaft
Produktion und Logistik’, a member of the Association of
German Engineers (VDI) in the field of technical logistics.