Waldkirch – After twenty years as Chairman of the Executive Board, Dr. Robert Bauer will leave SICK AG on 30 September 2021. It is foreseen that he will lead the Supervisory Board of SICK AG from May 2022, taking over from Klaus M. Bukenberger, who has been its Chairman for many years. Dr. Mats Gökstorp, responsible for the Products & Marketing portfolio, will follow Dr. Bauer as Chairman of the Executive Board from 1 October 2021. At the same time, Dr. Niels Syassen will join SICK AG’s Executive Board and take over Dr. Bauer’s responsibility for the Technology & Digitalization portfolio.
Dr. Mats Gökstorp has been responsible for the Executive Board Products & Marketing portfolio since 1 January 2021. The qualified IT expert and engineer joined SICK in 2003 with the acquisition of SICK IVP. As a member of the Management Board, the Swede was responsible for vision products since 2007 and later for the Group’s sales processes before he was appointed to the Executive Board on 1 May 2013 with responsibility for the Sales & Service portfolio. During recent years, he has been in charge of the global alignment of corporate sales structures, and has thus laid important foundations for the SICK Group’s continuing worldwide growth.
As a member of the Management Board of SICK AG, Dr. Niels Syassen has been responsible for innovations in gas and particle analysis solutions since 2018. Before joining SICK in 2017, he was active in a variety of management positions in Product Development at Bosch in the Automotive Electronics division, and for safety in the industrial gas measurement technology division at Dräger. He studied physics at the Technical University of Munich and at Imperial College in London, specializing in lasers, optics and semiconductors. He completed his doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in 2008.
Dr. Robert Bauer joined the company in 1994 as Manager of the Research and Development Department for Automation Technology. He took on overall responsibility for research and development on the Management Board in 1998. He was appointed to the Executive Board on 1 January 2000 and became Chairman of the Board on 1 October 2006. By request of the owner family he should succeed Klaus M. Bukenberger as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of SICK AG in May 2022. Klaus M. Bukenberger has been a member of this Board since 2002 and its Chairman since 2005. As part of the generational change in the Supervisory Board he will not stand again for the regular elections in May 2022 – after 20 years of activity on the Board.
“In the name of the Supervisory Board, I would like to thank Dr. Robert Bauer most sincerely for his extremely successful activity for the company. He has been largely responsible for shaping the company’s innovative leadership and the SICK Group’s continuous and sustainable growth over decades,” according to Klaus M. Bukenberger, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of SICK AG.
“At the same time, we wish Dr. Mats Gökstorp and Dr. Niels Syassen all the best for their new tasks in the Executive Board. We are convinced that the two of them will drive the company farther forward with their expertise and their international experience of globalization and digitalization.”
The owning family also thanks the Chairman of the Executive Board most sincerely for his great accomplishments: “Dr. Bauer has added important capital to our company’s success story with his deep specialist expertise and his far-sightedness. During his time on the Executive Board he has been able to form SICK into a world market leader in the automation sector, whereby he always built upon the values that have distinguished our family-owned company since its founding by Dr. Erwin Sick. We are very pleased that, in accord with our wishes, he has consented to continue his commitment to our company from May 2022 as Chairman of the Supervisory Board. We also thank Mr. Bukenberger for his important work as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of SICK AG – that made a major contribution towards the successful development of our company in the previous 20 years.”
The Executive Board of SICK AG (from 1 October 2021)
Dr. Mats Gökstorp, Chairman, Products & Marketing
Feng Jiao, Sales & Service
Dr. Martin Krämer, HR & Legal
Dr. Niels Syassen, Technology & Digitalization
Markus Vatter, Controlling, Finance & IT
Dr. Tosja Zywietz, Operations
SICK is one of the world’s leading suppliers of solutions for industrial sensor-based applications. The company, founded in 1946 by Dr. Erwin Sick and based in Waldkirch-im-Breisgau near Freiburg, is a technology and market leader with a global presence – with more than 50 subsidiaries and associated companies, as well as numerous sales offices. SICK achieved Group sales of about EUR 1.7 bn. during the 2020 fiscal year with more than 10,000 employees worldwide. Further information on SICK is available at www.sick.com