Dr. Holger K. is senior researcher at Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology (IPK), Berlin/Germany and Head of the Department Business Excellence Methods as well as of Information Centre Benchmarking (ICB).

He studied Business Engineering at the Technical University of Berlin and at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley and finished his studies with the degree of a Dipl.-Ing. In winter 1998 Dr. Holger K. joined the Division of Corporate Management at The Company as a Senior Researcher.

Since then he has initiated and conducted several national and international Benchmarking and Business Process Reengineering Projects and was responsible for their realisation. Beside projects all over Europe, Dr. Holger K. managed large scale projects in Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, etc.

His primary research interests are in the area of Benchmarking, Total Quality Management and EFQM, in both the public and private sector as well as in the industry and service sector.

The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft undertakes applied research of direct utility to private and public enterprise and of wide benefit to society. Its services are solicited by customers and contractual partners in industry, the service sector and public administration. The organization also accepts commissions and funding from German federal and state ministries and government departments to participate in future-oriented research projects with the aim of finding innovative solutions to issues concerning the industrial economy and society in general.

At present, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft maintains some 80 research units, including 58 Fraunhofer Institutes, at over 40 different locations in Germany. The majority of the roughly 12,500 staff are qualified scientists and engineers, who work with an annual research budget of over 1 billion euros. Of this sum, more than €900 million is generated through contract research. Roughly two thirds of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft’s contract research revenue is derived from contracts with industry and from publicly financed research projects.

The remaining one third is contributed by the German federal and state governments, partly as a means of enabling the institutes to pursue more fundamental research in areas that are likely to become relevant to industry and society in five or ten years’ time.

Affiliated research centres and representative offices in Europe, the USA and Asia provide contact with the regions of greatest importance to present and future scientific progress and economic development.