Ekrem Yigit­doel Appointed Managing Director to Lead Open Industry 4.0 Alliance into the Future

Reinach, Schweiz, 1 October 2021 

With imme­diate effect, the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance will be led and repre­sented by Ekrem Yigit­doel as Managing Director. Thus, the alliance is strength­ening its core team and setting the course for continued successful posi­tioning in the Industry 4.0 market. Ekrem Yigit­doel has been part of the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance since its founding and previ­ously held respon­si­bility for the board area “Marketing & Commu­ni­ca­tion” in his role as Vice Pres­i­dent Coop­er­a­tion & Joint Venture Manage­ment at Voith – a member of the Alliance as well. 

As Managing Director, Ekrem Yigit­doel reports to the Board. The posi­tion of Managing Director was newly created by the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance, on the one hand to do justice to the strong influx – with currently more than 80 members – and on the other hand to profes­sion­ally align the struc­ture of the organ­i­sa­tion. The aim is to further expand the member­ship base and ensure that everyone bene­fits from the Alliance on an ongoing basis through their member­ship. 

As a former employee of Voith, Ekrem Yigit­doel brings the cumu­la­tive exper­tise to actively support the course of the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance and to further estab­lish the support and coop­er­a­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties of the Alliance members in the market. 

I am very happy and proud to receive the trust of the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance to shape our vision and mission together with the member compa­nies and to bring our vision into reality. We had a very good start two years ago, a signif­i­cant growth in member­ship and matu­rity of the OI4 orga­ni­za­tion. The foun­da­tion is laid to continue now with imple­men­ta­tion projects of OI4 compliant solu­tions. Those imple­men­ta­tions will happen at our member compa­nies but also at customers of our members. 

– Ekrem Yigit­doel, Managing Director 

Open Industry 4.0 Alliance to be further expanded 

The tech­nology company Voith will remain part of the Alliance’s Board of Direc­tors and will be repre­sented by Dr. Benedikt Hofmann, Chief Tech­nology Officer for Automa­tion, Digi­tal­i­sa­tion, AI & Drive Tech­nology at Voith. Previ­ously, Dr. Benedikt Hofmann held various manage­ment posi­tions at Voith in the field of digi­tal­i­sa­tion and mobility and worked as a manager at McKinsey&Co, before joining Voith.    

I am pleased to be able to contribute to the faster, simpler and value-creating digi­ti­za­tion of the industry via OI4. 

– Dr. Benedikt Hofmann 

The alliance is getting an addi­tional support of Sebas­tian Hilscher. Sebas­tian will be part of the board with imme­diate effect and will succeed Hans-Jürgen Hilscher who  will remain at the Alliance for a certain tran­si­tion period. 

Sebas­tian Hilscher has been CEO of Hilscher Gesellschaft für Systemau­toma­tion mbH. Sebas­tian was previ­ously respon­sible as CTO for the further devel­op­ment of netX, Hilscher’s core tech­nology, and has already cele­brated great successes with it. 

The Open Industry 4.0 Alliance is a key piece of the indus­trial digi­tal­iza­tion. I am excited to be part of this funda­mental change towards a produc­tion in a digital envi­ron­ment. 

– Sebas­tian Hilscher 

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EKREM YIGIT­DOEL AS NEW MANAGING DIRECTOR OF THE OPEN INDUSTRY 4.0 ALLIANCE