Prof. Dr.-Ing. Joachim Metternich Heads the Institute for Production Management, Technology, and Machine Tools (PTW) at TU Darmstadt. His work at PTW primarily revolves around advancing lean production with digital technologies and employing learning factories for this purpose. He gained extensive experience at both domestic and international production sites of leading German companies where he was involved in numerous value stream projects. Before joining PTW, he held a position overseeing the global production system of a mechanical engineering firm.

Dr.-Ing. Tobias Meudt is Manager Corporate Strategy & Portfolio Management at JUWI. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the PTW Institute of the TU Darmstadt. For more than ten years, he has been working intensively on topics such as lean production, Industry 4.0 and the development of digitalization strategies for companies in practice. His experience from consulting projects and industry working groups has been incorporated into the development of the methods. He wrote his doctoral thesis on Value Stream Analysis 4.0 and accompanied the development of the Value Stream Method 4.0.

Dr.-Ing. Lukas Hartmann leads the team for Manufacturing Excellence at EDAG PS. In his previous position, he was the head of the Center for Industrial Productivity (CIP) research group at the PTW Institute of Darmstadt University of Technology. In his research work, he deals with the digital transformation of companies and the design of value streams in Industry 4.0. In addition, as a lean consultant, he is confronted with a wide range of issues in factory and value stream design. His experience from practical projects has been incorporated into this book.