Portrait of Professor Schmidt
Prof. Thorsten Schmidt, Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Mechanical Science and Engineering, has held the Chair of Material Handling since 2008. Since 2013, he has also been Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal Logistics Research / Technical Logistics and Logistics Engineering and President of the Scientific Society for Technical Logistics (WGTL). The mechanical engineering graduate was born in Dortmund in 1966.
Without technical logistics ... Germany would not be a world export champion, but a service desert.
Being a professor... is a unique opportunity to dedicate yourself to current topics without any restrictions and to work on them with enthusiastic young people.
Students ... acquire the ability to combine technology and operational processes in a holistic approach and to work on them in a results-oriented and practical manner.
In the future... swarms of autonomous and small-scale units will increasingly realize the material flow and relieve the burden on people in factories. That's what we're working on.
If I could study again ... I would probably end up back in mechanical engineering, but a) no longer in my home town and b) focus more on IT, which plays a fundamental role in all disciplines today.
Excellence ... means not getting lost in the crowd and is more of an obligation than a status symbol.