CWG Officers & Directors 2014

Chairman

Marin Ukalovic
SAP Deutschland AG & Co. KG		 Marin is one of those really curious creatures who seems to be just as comfortable on both sides of the techie/non-techie divide. He's got a background in engineering, but for many of the past years he's been working in sales ... much of that time as a presales consultant, where he's been especially effective, not least because he's just as competent with the business details as he is with the technical ones. He´s a CoAuthor of the SAPPRESS Bestseller “Variant Configuration with SAP”. Given this background, Marin's got an especially keen understanding of his customers, their business problems and the best fit solutions”.
Marin has a degree in industrial engineering and works as Senior Solution Advisor in the Business Development Area for the IM&C and Mill Industry. He started his career at SAP in 1999 and joined the CWG in the same year. Being close to the CWG makes sure, that product configuration requirements get channeled in the SAP Field Organization.
As an ambassador of the CWG within SAP, I would like to look out for opportunities where CWG can add value – especially on customers’ side. Having the chance to influence both sides, CWG and SAP, is one more motivational point. As the responsible SAP Account Manager for the CWG I would like to make sure, that CWG gets the best support in new topics and software.

Vice-Chairman

Robert Eramo
Lam Research Corporation		 A native of the state of Tennessee, Robert came to San Jose, CA upon completion of his Aerospace/Mechanical Engineering Master's Degree Program at the University of Tennessee Space Institute in 1990.  After 6 years working at the defense giant Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, he began work at Lam Research Inc, a leader in the Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment sector.  He has been working with SAP since its implementation at Lam Research in 2000 where he was the VC Implementation Lead.  Having started as the lead VC product modeler, he currently manages the product modeling team.  He has been active in the CWG since the Berlin 2000 conference and has led the ECM and subsequently the VC/ECM Focus Group.  As many folks are beginning to find out, his passion is fishing and he is willing to share his knowledge with anyone.
Robert’s near-term vision for the CWG is to build up the infrastructure required to take the organization to the next level.  3 years out, he expects that member training, influence councils, and reinforcing partner/member interaction opportunities will be a big part of the CWG experience.  With that in mind, the CWG will need to rely less on the board of directors to do the majority of the work and more on various subcommittees that are empowered to guide the CWG’s direction.  With that in mind, Robert wants to continue on the board of directors to help ensure that CWG is prepared to take this next important step.  Robert was the President of the CWG in 2007.

Treasurer

Peter Illing
Integrity GmbH		 Peter Illing specialized in artificial intelligence while working on his master's degree in computer science, and then spent the better part of 20 years working first in the AI departments of Martin- Marietta and Breit International, and then for the AI software vendor, IntelliCorp. His background combined nicely with serendipity to lead him into the world of SAP, where he has specialized in IPC and Variant Configuration development since 1997. After major IPC/Java projects at IBM and EvoBus, he was the architect for a program to replace all legacy configurations with the IPC at Siemens Energy & Automation and is currently engaged in the mother of all pricing projects at HP. He has been a Director and Partner of Integrity GmbH since 2002.
He is an American who lives in Bavaria with his wife, his two horses, and his cat. I am a member of a community of SAP configuration technology users. As such I take very seriously the goals, expressed in our by-laws, of engaging with other members of that community to exchange ideas and information; and of engaging with SAP to improve the software, to provide guidance for their future development, and to keep informed of their plans. The community can only prosper if members make themselves available to carry its activities forward. I have been pleased to do this in various capacities (document translator, program committee, and venue organizer) and look forward to continuing my service.

 

 

Officers:

President
Bernhard Teltscher
SAP AG		 Bernhard is working at SAP AG since 2001.  He started in SAP IPC Product Management team being responsible for IPC-PME.  Currently he is working in Product Management in the area Application Innovation for LoB Customer being responsible for the topics Product and Solution Configuration and Customer Service.  In his role as Product Manager he listens to Customer’s requirements and addresses the needed enhancements to the SAP Organization.  Bernhard has a degree in chemical engineering. 
Bernhard joined CWG when he started working for SAP AG in 2001. His main goal is to provide the CWG board with early insights into SAP product roadmap and help getting the hottest topics into the conferences program.  
Vice-President
Veryl "Chip" Holder
IBM		 Mr. Holder has 13 years experience with SAP Variant Configuration. His many roles in business related to Variant Configuration include VC Specialist, Configuration Team Lead, SAP Applications Consultant, Business Process Architect, and Senior Business Analyst. Mr. Holder has been employed with Kimball Office Furniture for a total of 10 years, and was a SAP Consultant with IBM Business Consulting Services for 6 years. Industries in which he has consulted include consumer electronics, industrial printing and safety supplies, contract electronics, office furniture, steel store fixtures, and wood cabinets. Prior to his SAP career, Mr. Holder was a Product Engineer with Kimball Product Design and Research, where he also implemented and supported the Logia Configurator.
Mr. Holder holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Agricultural Systems Management from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. He is also a Certified SAP Consultant in Product Lifecycle Management. Mr. Holder also operates a small farming operation, consisting of corn, soybean, and wheat production in Southern Indiana.
Past President
Scott Perdue
Configit		 Scott Perdue is President of the SAP Partner Configit Inc. based in Atlanta GA.  He has been working with SAP's Variant Configuration, IPC, and Configuration solutions since 2007.  Scott earned his Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Georgia in 1998 focusing on Management Information Systems.  His main objectives in serving as a CWG Board Member are to increase awareness and participation in the CWG community and continue to push the limits of what is possible with Configuration technology.  He believes these two initiatives are tightly integrated.
Secretary
Kevin Meyer
Haworth Inc		 Kevin has been involved in the Office furniture industry for many years, directly involved with the product configuration side of the business.  As you know, the office furniture industry has some significant configuration space issues, and requires innovation in the use of configuration technology.  Haworth is currently implementing ERP2005 suite, including heavy use of Variant Configuration.
Kevin has shown a continued growing interest in contributing to the CWG, with posting in the forums and suggestions for Regional chapter meetings in the Michigan area.  He has also demonstrated the ability to persuade Haworth management on the benefits of CWG participation and contribution.  With Kevin's prior experience in organizations such as the OFDA (Office Furniture Dealers Alliance) he will be a great addition to driving the CWG forward into the future.

 

Directors:

Alexander Auffinger
MHZ Hachtel GmbH		 Alexander works at MHZ Hachtel GmbH & Co KG, a major producer of textile window decorations.  He worked in different roles and has been working with SAP since its implementation at MHZ in 2001 where he was in the VC implementation team.  After completion of an IT/Organisation/HR Master’s Degree Program at the Technical University of Chemnitz, he took over responsibility for the product modeling team in 2006 the pricing team in 2009 and the ecommerce team in 2012.
As a third year member to the board, Alexander would like to represent a midsized company in the CWG from a SAP customer’s point of view.  He focuses on pragmatic solutions that can be realized without enormous budgets or resources.  The idea of the foundation of regional chapters is of special interest to him.
Bill Dorow
IBM		 Bill Dorow is a Senior Software Engineer with IBM in Rochester, Minnesota, where he has spent sixteen years in product and solution configuration, with deep experience in various configuration technologies (Trilogy, Selectica, and now SAP), and responsibilities ranging from modeling to application development to performance management to general solution architecture .  Bill is currently involved in IBM's Blue Harmony Project, a very large SAP implementation program, where he fills the role of Configurator and Modeling Architect.  Bill earned his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science at Northern Michigan University in 1994, and recently completed his Master of Science in Computer Science at the University of Minnesota in December 2010.
One of Bill's main objectives, as a Board member, is to help influence SAP's continued progress in product and solution configuration, specifically in terms of providing support for more "out of the box" integration of solution and complex configuration and its surrounding business processes.
Bill Grow
JCI		 Bill has worked as a VC Product Manager for Johnson Controls Unitary products division in Norman, Oklahoma for the past 4 years. Manufactured at this facility are Commercial Heating and Air Conditioning units. In his current position he maintains all the VC data for the Norman facility and working with various teams to implement various improvements such as utilizing tables, aided in troubleshooting and revising our current database of rules and dependencies as well as plotting JCI's future VC roadmap for the next several years.  His SAP knowledge and experience expands beyond VC to include other areas of the business such as purchasing, manufacturing and BOM costing, routings, etc. Bill’s Product knowledge has been a key in driving JCI’s future vision for the JCI Unitary division.
Prior to joining JCI Bill had been working with SAP Variant Configuration for over 11 years with Federal Prison Industries (FPI). He helped implement and provided the guidance, training, and hands-on support that made FPI use of variant configuration for production of systems furniture successful.
Bill’s goal as a Board member is to continue to influence SAP in making improvements to VC and stay informed on new solutions.

 

Lars Hansson
Grundfos		 Lars has worked with product configuration for Grundfos since 1999, first as a project manager, responsible for building a team of highly skilled people within configuration. Grundfos joined in 2007 the global product master data team and the global product configuration team in a single central function which today consists of more than 40 talented people working based in Denmark, Finland, Hungary and China. Lars lives in Bjerringbro Denmark, with his wife Tove and their two boys.   
 
Chuck Howard
Albany International		 Chuck Howard is the Global VC Team Lead and SAP Analyst primarily focused on the Plan to Produce area at Albany International.  This allows focus from the design of the product through the manufacturing process.  He has worked with ERP systems for 12 years in development, customizations and support.  This experience aids his current responsibilities of leading the VC team, supporting the business and improving the VC to make the business more efficient.  In addition to implementing and supporting the VC in 16 plants in 11 countries, he also served as the PP Lead during the initial implementation of SAP in Albany’s composite business.   
 
Steve Lenz
SAP AG		 A native of France, Steve started his professional career in Germany after having completed his Engineering Master's double-Degree Program at the University of Strasbourg France and Offenburg Germany in 1997.  After 2 years working for ORIGIN as a QAD and the Calico consultant, he began work at SAP Consulting as an IPC consultant.  After 5 years, he took the challenge to move to SAP Custom Development in order to establish the Center of Expertise for Product and Solution Configuration.  This program is up to speed now and Steve is showing passion about enabling customers to move from product configuration business to solution configuration processes.
Steve has very good opinion about the setup and the organization of CWG.  The way the CWG has promoted the configuration topic in the past is a very important support for SAP.  Nevertheless new challenges are arriving.  The recent financial crisis had an impact on how SAP customers need to execute their IT projects and the way they need to address their business.  Steve wants to help the CWG to play a major role as an interface between SAP, SAP Partners and SAP customers to support those customer behavior changes.  Steve also believes that the CWG could be a platform where SAP, SAP Partners and SAP customers are working on co-innovation projects.
David Loomans
Greeenheck Corporation		 David Loomans has been working with ERP Systems and complex configuration for the past 15 years.  He has extensive knowledge of SAP’s Variant Configuration functionality in a complex manufacturing environment.  David also has a deep understanding of commercial third party configurators and has successfully integrated them with SAP.  David can share his experience implementing SAP Variant Configuration with over 70,000 configurable BOM and 700 orders per day.  David served as the SAP Project Manager at Greenheck Fan Corporation for three full cycles of a multiphase SAP implementation.
David has served as the vice president and president of the Configuration Work Group in 2009 and 2010 and is currently the chair person for the American SAPS Users Group (ASUG) Configuration Work Group (CWG) Special Interest Group (SIG).
Lawrence Matusek
eLogic Group		 Lawrence has more than twenty years of experience in engineering and information technology consulting.  As Managing Partner for eLogic Group, he is responsible for consulting operations and the delivery of client project services.  Throughout his career, Lawrence has applied a high degree of creativity and deep technical knowledge to deliver uniquely optimized solutions in engineering and manufacturing.  He has held management positions in large consulting firms including KPMG and IBM Global Services.  His engineering expertise entailed designing, constructing, and maintaining large industrial systems in various industries such as energy and industrial products.  Lawrence is a widely recognized solution architect for product configuration and engineer-to-order systems.  He brings a multi-discipline perspective to business challenges and has routinely devised solutions and recovered projects where other consulting firms were unsuccessful.  He has a proven track record of continual innovation that has driven dramatic process improvements for customers.   
 
Daniel Naus
CEO at ConfigAir LLC and Principal Consultant at eSpline LLC		 13+ years experience in complex IT systems architecture, development and deployment, focusing on processes in support of sales of complex configurable products on the SAP platform.   
 
Nishan Pillay
IBM Global Business Services		 Nishan is an Associate Partner with IBM Global Business Services. He has a long and proven track record of successfully implementing SAP across multiple industries and business processes. He has led teams on 12 large SAP projects across Automotive, High Tech, Chemicals and Petroleum, and Industrial Products sectors, including most of the core IBM accounts. They cover all types of engagements including full life cycle implementations, upgrades, migrations and production support projects.
He is an Electrical Engineer with 22 years of consulting and industry experience. Nishan is SAP certified with expertise in CRM, IPC/VC and SD with broad knowledge of other SAP modules. His consulting experience has been in conducting full scale requirements analysis and mapping/configuring of client’s business process starting with Blueprint Design, Gap Analysis, Prototype Development, Testing, Go Live Support and basically implementing end to end SAP solutions focused on the Configurator/IPC space. He has deep knowledge of project management techniques and best practices.
For the past several years Nishan has been leading the IBM Go to Market effort on a new generation product called SAP Solution Sales Configuration. This allows customers to enable Solution Selling and bundle products and services into complex solutions using SAP.
Harald Reitz
SAP Labs		 Harald Reitz is business solution architect within the SAP Industry Business Unit for Industrial Machinery & Components (IM&C).  He is responsible for the sales and manufacturing solution for companies in the industrial machinery & components industry with more than 5000 customers.  His focus areas are product configuration and make-to-order / engineer-to-order manufacturing.  Since 2005 he is in the board of directors of the Configuration Workgroup, the international SAP user group for product configuration.
Harald started his career at SAP in 1996.  Before joining the IM&C solution management team in 2001, he was working as an integration consultant and he has comprehensive knowledge in implementing SAP solutions for industrial manufacturing companies.  He has a degree in industrial engineering from the Technical University of Karlsruhe, Germany.
Holger Riecke
Siemens		 Holger Riecke is a project manager with Siemens, Germany, Leipzig for certain configuration and other software projects.  He started utilizing the IPC in 2000 with a small modelling project.  During the last years his group ramped up a standard configuration platform integrated into the e-Business landscape.  He has several years experience in modelling techniques (compliant and advanced mode) and integration scenarios with IPC.
One of Holger's main objectives is to help influence SAP in terms of providing support for more "out of the box" solutions for complex configuration and integration scenarios.
Rick Smethers
Schneider Electric		 Rick Smethers is a 34+ year veteran with Schneider Electric which is based in Paris, France. His career includes working as an Application Engineer in Square D brand electrical distribution products including Low Voltage Switchgear, Low Voltage Switchboards, Low Voltage Busway, Medium Voltage Metal-Enclosed Switchgear, Medium Voltage Metal- Clad Switchgear, Medium Voltage Motor Control Centers and Utility Substation Circuit Breakers.  Rick began product modeling with Schneider Electric proprietary configurators in 1992 and in 2005 became the Project Manager for a Custom Development Project using SAP configurators. Rick received his degree from Miami University of Ohio in Computer Science with a minor in Electro-Mechanical Engineering. In off hours, Rick is an avid fisherman and big game hunter. He is a professional fishing guide and is sponsored by Pradco Bait Company, one of the world largest manufacturers of fishing lures. Rick is also a member of the United States Eastern Wado-Ryu Karate Federation and currently pursuing his black belt. Rick was President of the CWG in 2008.
Edgar Sommer
Independent Consultant		 Edgar has been working in the variant config and e-commerce arena for over ten years.  Coming from a pure research background (PhD in artificial intelligence) he was introduced to the world of SAP and variant config when he joined IntelliCorp in 1997.  He's been a freelancer since 2001, working in all areas touching product configuration in the SAP world, from pure VC modeling to java and JSP programming to logistics integration with the surrounding areas SD, MM, PP, PS, CRM, internet sales.   
 
Michael Zarges
SAP AG		 When Michael made his master in Industrial & Mechanical Engineering in 1998, he realized that he was much better in repairing software than his car or bike. So he joined SAP as a developer in PP and IS Automotive. At the peak of the dotcom boom in 2001, he moved to SAP Markets, a former spin-off for “new economy” topics, to support customers in implementing the “Internet (yeah!) Pricing and Configurator” and work with development to tell them what he has learned from customers. In the same year, he attended his first CWG conference in Lisbon, and has been a continuous supporter of this group of enthusiasts. In 2005, he helped with the formal incorporation of the CWG as an independent association and was a member of the board for several years.
Since then, he dealt with the fascinating business challenges of sales configuration in various roles at SAP. Today, Michael acts as the “product owner” in the development team of the IPC. Hence, a close contact to the CWG is of vital importance to let the user base know about the latest enhancements and collect feedback for further development.