about professor dr.-Ing. Peter Heisig
Dr.-Ing. Peter Heisig is Professor for Information and Knowledge Management, Vice-President for Research and Transfer at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam (GER) and Visiting Professor at the School of Business and Law, University
of East London (UK).
Prof. Heisig started working in the Knowledge Management field within research projects on knowledge creation in organizations (1987-89, DFG) at the University Göttingen and experienced-based computer-supported work (1990-1993, BMBF) at the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology with academic partners (University Hamburg, RWTH Aachen, TU Darmstadt, Fraunhofer ISI) and several industry partners (e.g. BWM AG, Gildemeister AG, Siemens AG and Traub AG).
Peter was working at the Computer-Integrated Manufacturing Technology Transfer (CIM-TT) Berlin-Brandenburg to provide knowledge from research and practice towards small and medium-sized manufacturing companies.
As Head of the Information Center Benchmarking (IZB), he was engaged in undertaking benchmarking projects with companies like BMW AG, Hewlett-Packard GmbH, T-Mobil AG, Mercedes-Benz AG, Lufthansa AG, Hoechst AG, Continental AG, Henkel KGaA, FIAT (Italy), Scania (SWE), Philips (NL), etc.
In 2000, Prof. Heisig was elected Vice Chairman of the Global Benchmarking Network and 2001 became Chairman of the GBN following its Dr. Robert C. Camp who is considered the father of benchmarking, who became the President of the GBN. Peter led a global study among the twenty members to identify the different benchmarking service offers of each center.
In 1996 Peter founded the Competence Center Knowledge Management and led the first European Based Benchmarking Study on Knowledge Management sponsored by five large German companies. The results were partly published by Springer –
after an embargo period – in 2001 under the title “Knowledge Management. Best Practice in Europe” with a second revised and extended edition in 2003: “Knowledge Management. Concepts and Best Practices” which was also translated into Chinese language (Tsinghua University Press, Peking 2004). This study was based on an extensive survey among the largest European companies and thirteen case studies including on-site visits of the research team plus two side visits to benchmarking partners as well as two workshops this the sponsoring companies and a final workshop with the benchmarking partners and sponsors. Peter also collaborated with the TECTEM at the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland) and the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) led by Carla O’Dell at Houston (TX, USA) in benchmarking projects on knowledge management and communities of practice.
The Competence Center Knowledge Management led by Prof. Heisig carried out further comprehensive research projects and assisted businesses and public administration with their knowledge management initiatives. Organizations supported were Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH, Fraunhofer Society, HypoVereinsbank Group, Jones Lang LaSalle, Minister of Interior in Northrhein-Westfalia, SAS Institute Deutschland GmbH, Volkswagen AG and Unilever Best Foods Deutschland GmbH to name a few.
The “Wissensbilanz – Made in Germany” initiative emerged from the Competence Center Knowledge Management under the guidance of Prof. Heisig. The “Working Group Wissensbilanz” (Arbeitskreis Wissensbilanz) composed of researchers and consultants developed an approach to identify strength and weaknesses of the intellectual capital of organizations. The method profits from previous experiences in Scandinavia and Austria and was co-developed with a pilot group of 12 German small and medium-sized businesses. All material is open access and available in German and English language. The software-tool WB-Toolbox was developed to support the application of the method in organisations. The project was supported by the German Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) 2004 – 2008.
After receiving his PhD in Engineering about knowledge management from the Technical University Berlin in 2004, Dr.-Ing. Peter Heisig started providing consultancy services and continued collaborating with researchers. Among his clients were companies such as Asian Productivity Organization (APO), Japan, Robert Bosch GmbH, ComputaCenter GmbH, Degussa AG, Deutsche Bahn, Maersk Oil, Denmark, Sanofi-Aventis AG, ThyssenKrupp AG, Unilever Best Foods Deutschland GmbH, etc.
In 2007, Peter joint the Engineering Design Center (EDC), Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge (UK) where he continued working on the long-term perspective within the project “Knowledge and Information Management through Life” of complex products like buildings or airplane engines with partners like ABB, Airbus, BAE Systems, Balfour Beatty, Rolls-Royce and other UK-based companies as well as 11 UK universities.
At Leeds University Business School (UK) he initiated a large-scale collaborative research project with partners from 30+ countries conducting an extensive research about “Future research needs in Knowledge Management”. This activity involved 222 KM experts (> 3 years experiences either in KM research or KM practice) addressing future research needs in KM theory and different KM dimensions such as strategy, business performance, human factors etc.
Prof. Heisig was appointed as KM Expert by the APO (Tokyo), the CEN (Brussels), DIN (Germany) and VDI (Germany) to work on KM standards and guidelines.
Prof. Heisig belongs to the Top20 most productive authors of the Journal of Knowledge Management. He holds a Diploma in Social Sciences (University Göttingen, DE) and earned his PhD from Technical University Berlin (DE).