Bernd Lauterbach, Stefan Sauer, Jens Kappauf, Jens Gottlieb, Dominik Metzger, Christopher Sürie im Porträt – Transportation Management with SAP TM

Bernd Lauterbach

Dr. Bernd Lauterbach has more than 20 years experience in SAP Transportation and Logistics. He holds a PhD in electrical engineering. After spending several years doing Assembler, C /C++, and Occam programming for image processing, GIS, and auto routing systems, he joined SAP in 1995 at the SAP headquarters in Walldorf, Germany, as part of the SAP ERP LE-TRA development team. From 2000 to 2007, he was the lead architect for SAP Event Management and SAP Auto ID Infrastructure, and subsequently led development of SAP Transportation Management as a program/development manager.

Bernd continuously supported transportation projects of strategic SAP customers from shipper and LSP industries. Since 2008, Bernd has been a member of the IBU Travel & Transportation responsible for cargo and logistics, currently holding the position of chief architect.

Stefan Sauer

Stefan Sauer has studied international business information technology at the Cooperative State University in Mannheim, Germany. After joining SAP in 2007, Stefan got experience in development and consulting teams in Germany as well as with SAP Research in Australia.

With the ramp-up of SAP Transportation Management 8.0 in 2010, he accompanied the success of the software product as an SAP TM consultant, being involved in implementation projects in retail and ocean freight industries and participating in customer engagements in other industries such as fashion, rail, air freight, and manufacturing.

Stefan supports projects both from a business process perspective by creating blueprints and implementation concepts, and from a technical perspective as the link between project and custom development. He is a trainer for SAP TM for both functional and technical training courses.

Jens Kappauf

Jens Kappauf has been with SAP SE for more than 14 years. In his previous role as a senior business solution architect and industry solution manager, he was responsible for the strategic direction of SAP’s solutions for third-party and contract logistics, while also focusing on technical integration, deployment, and implementation.

In 2015 he joined WESTERNACHER Business Management Consulting AG in Heidelberg, Germany, as managing partner, co-heading its global business unit for warehouse logistics based on SAP EWM. With almost 20 years of SAP know-how and industry and international consulting experience, he is a hands-on expert of SAP solutions, template building, and global roll-outs, with a special focus on warehouse operations and spare parts logistics in the areas of after-market sales and service operations, supply chain planning, fulfillment, and execution.

Jens holds a degree in business administration, is the author and co-author of several logistics-related books and publications, and lives with his family near Heidelberg, Germany.

Jens Gottlieb

Dr. Jens Gottlieb has a PhD in computer science and has worked in software development at SAP SE in Walldorf, Germany since 2000. He has written three books and more than 25 scientific publications in the areas of transportation management and heuristic optimization algorithms, and has edited six books.

Jens was the development architect for the vehicle scheduling and routing optimizer and the carrier selection optimizer, which are used in SAP TM, APO-TPVS and MRS. He headed development projects both in SAP TM and APO-TPVS, served as development manager for SAP TM, and has been a product owner for SAP TM responsible for transportation planning and network.

Dominik Metzger

Dominik Metzger is a principal consultant in the SAP Supply Chain Execution space and the managing director of Westernacher Consulting Singapore. Dominik studied business management at the Cooperative State University in Mannheim, Germany. After joining SAP SE in 2007, he conducted a traineeship working in business development for supply chain management, strategy consulting, and solution marketing in New York. Dominik joined SAP Consulting in 2010, specializing in the transportation and logistics industry. In the following years, he delivered numerous implementation projects in the SAP Supply Chain Execution space across various industries: freight forwarding, ocean liner, trucking, retail, chemicals, and contract logistics.

After winning the first implementation project with SAP TM for an ocean carrier, Dominik has been working in Singapore since 2012 as a senior TM consultant. He founded the Southeast Asia subsidiary for Westernacher Consulting in Singapore in 2014. Dominik is now responsible for supporting global customer implementation projects in the transportation and logistics industry as a solution architect and driving business development activities across Asia.

Christopher Sürie

Dr. Christopher Sürie has worked for more than ten years as an expert consultant in supply chain optimization and transportation management at SAP Deutschland SE & Co KG in Walldorf, Germany. In this position, he has been involved in numerous international customer projects, implementing both SAP Advanced Planner and Optimizer and SAP Transportation Management and focusing on their planning capabilities and optimization engines in production and transportation. He worked as a solution architect in several SAP TM projects and taught numerous SAP TM customer trainings.

Prior to joining SAP, Christopher worked in the department of production and supply chain management at Darmstadt University of Technology and completed his PhD thesis in the area of production planning for process industries, which was awarded several prizes.