Walter Ganz

Walter Ganz studied Industrial Sociology, Psychology and Political Science at the University of Freiburg (Germany). In his first careerstep he was working as an assistant researcher at the Max-Planck-Institute, in Freiburg. After that, he joined as a researcher at the ICT Research Center of Infratest in Munich. In 1990 he joined the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering (IAO), in Stuttgart, as a research assistant.

He is now Director and Member of the board of the Fraunhofer IAO, Head of the research department “Human Resource Management” and Head of the research department “Service-Engineering and -Management”.

Beside his leadership performance, he is taking part in a lot of supporting activities. For instance, assisting the “Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF)”, regarding the development of research programs and activities in the field of “Future of Work” and “Innovation in Services”.

Walter is author and co-author of more than 25 publications in the last 3 years. He recently got the “Best Paper Award” in the 4th International Conference on the Human Side of Service Engineering. HSSE 2016.

Aside that he is also a member of several national and international scientific boards. For instance:

• Editorial Board Member, Service Science Journal, 2016.
• Scientific Advisory Board Member, Federal Ministry of Research and Education, Conference on “Social Innovation and Work“, 2016, Berlin.
• Member of the “Smart Service Welt”, Working Group, Strategic Initiative of Acatech, 2015.
• Scientific Board Member of the Human Side of Service Engineering, Conference 2016, Orlando, USA, 2016.
• Scientific Board Member of the European Review of Service Economics and Management/Revue Européenne d’Economie et Management des Services, 2016.
• Program Committee Member of the Conference on Serviceology (ICServ2017), Vienna, 2017.
  Program Committee Member of the Conference on Serviceology (ICServ2018), Taiwan, 2018.
• Scientific Board Member of the Human Side of Service Engineering Conference, HSSE 2018, Orlando, USA, 2018.

The research interests of Walter Ganz are focusing on Service Engineering and Work Design and can be divided into the following areas:

• Industry 4.0 and Work design (Designing Working Systems)
• SmartAIServices (Impact of AI on operation design and service products)
• Service Engineering (QM and Testing of new service solutions, Process Design)
• Mayor industries: Manufacturing, Technical Services and ICT industries

Methods he use in research: behavioural studies, simulation tools, statistics, design thinking methods, engineering design methods and tools.