At the meeting of the Research Advisory Board on November 21, the members present unanimously elected the two industry spokespersons for three years. Together with Peter Liggesmeyer (Fraunhofer IESE) as spokesperson for science and Rainer Stark (TU Berlin) as deputy spokesperson for science, they form the spokesperson team of the Research Advisory Board.

Development engineer Klaus Bauer brings his expertise as Head of Research (Smart Factory Infrastructure) at Trumpf Werkzeugmaschinen to the speaker panel. Prior to this, he was responsible for basic technologies at the tool manufacturer and in this role dealt with fundamental topics such as intelligent networking, smart data or artificial intelligence and associated business model innovations. Since 2018, Bauer has been part of the research advisory board's spokesperson team as deputy industry spokesperson. He is also involved in numerous other organizations such as the German Engineering Federation VDMA, the VDI/VDE Society for Measurement and Automation Technology and the Industry 4.0 platform.

Björn Sautter succeeds Klaus Bauer in the position of Deputy Industry Spokesperson. He has been a member of the Research Advisory Board since 2022. The Senior Expert Industry 4.0 Ecosystems at Festo supports the company-wide orientation of activities relating to Industry 4.0 and is the contact person for research collaborations and innovation networks in this area. He helped prepare the German government's Manufacturing-X initiative via the Industry 4.0 platform and was most recently involved in its implementation in various roles, particularly in the Factory-X flagship project to create a collaborative digital ecosystem for factory equipment suppliers and operators.

Harald Schöning(Software AG) went into well-deserved retirement at the end of 2025 and therefore also resigned from the Research Advisory Board. Peter Liggesmeyer, Scientific Spokesperson of the Industry 4.0 Research Advisory Board, expresses his thanks to Harald Schöning - on behalf of the entire Research Advisory Board - for his many years of commitment: "During his many years of involvement as Industry Spokesperson of the Industry 4.0 Research Advisory Board, Harald Schöning provided important impetus for research and its implementation in practice. He has made important contributions. The Industry 4.0 Research Advisory Board would like to express its heartfelt thanks for this!"

About the Industry 4.0 Research Advisory Board

As a strategic and independent body, the Industry 4.0 Research Advisory Board makes a significant contribution to identifying research-based solutions for the further development and implementation of Industry 4.0 and thus providing guidance - with the overarching goal of strengthening the German innovation system and value creation. To this end, the Research Advisory Board currently brings together 33 representatives from science and industry with their interdisciplinary expertise, formulates new, pre-competitive research impulses and needs, identifies medium to long-term development perspectives and derives options for action for the successful implementation of Industrie 4.0. Research in the field of Industry 4.0 is increasingly focusing on topics such as sustainability, resilience, interoperability, technological and strategic sovereignty and the central role of people. The work of the Research Advisory Board is coordinated by acatech - National Academy of Science and Engineering, supervised by the Project Management Agency Karlsruhe (PTKA) and funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR).