Thorsten Blecker is a full professor at the Hamburg University of Technology, Department for Business Logistics and General Management (5-11). He holds a master’s degree in business administration
(with honors) and a PhD (summa cum laude) from the University of Duisburg, Germany. He finished
his habilitation thesis in September, 2004, at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria. Blecker is guesteditor of a special issue of IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management on “Mass Customization
Manufacturing Systems” (forthcoming by 2007), co-editor and author of several books, for example,
“Production/Operations Management in Virtual Organizations”, “Enterprise without Boundaries”,
“Competitive Strategies”, “Web-Based Manufacturing” and “Information and Management Systems
for Product Customization”. His main research interests include business logistics and supply chain
management, production/operations management, industrial information systems, Internet-based
production systems, mass customization manufacturing systems, strategic management, and virtual
organizations.
Gerhard Friedrich is a full professor of computer science at the University Klagenfurt, Austria.
He manages the Institute for Business Informatics and Application Systems and directs the Computer
Science in Production, Operation and Management research group. From 1993 to 1997, he was the head
of the Department for Configuration and Diagnosis Systems at Siemens Austria. Friedrich received a
PhD and an MS in computer science from Vienna University of Technology, Austria, and was a guest
researcher at the Stanford Research Institute and at Siemens Corporate Research. His research interests
include knowledge acquisition, constraint satisfaction, configuration, planning, and diagnosis.