VDI Medal of Honour in recognition of outstanding service
A special honour for decades of dedication: Dr.-Ing. Günter Ullrich has been awarded the VDI Medal of Honour. This recognises his outstanding commitment to the engineering community, as well as his exceptional contributions to automated guided vehicle systems and mobile robotics.
Günter Ullrich has been a member of the VDI since February 1987 and has been actively involved in the Committee for Driverless Transport Systems ever since. In November 1996, he took over as chair of what was then the VDI Technical Committee on ‘Driverless Transport Systems’, which is now known as the ‘Mobile Robotics’ Committee.
He can thus look back on almost 40 years of work on technical committees – around 30 of those as chair. During this time, he has played a key role in guiding and shaping the development of the AGV sector and mobile robotics. National and international standards were established, VDI guidelines and technical publications were drawn up, and professional exchange within a steadily growing industry was promoted.
His commitment extends far beyond the technical committee. Among other things, Günter Ullrich served as chairman of the VDI Ruhr District Association from 2012 to 2019 and chaired its ETHIK Advisory Board from 2008 to 2019. Furthermore, he has been actively involved for many years in various programme and technical committees within the field of intralogistics.
The VDI Medal of Honour recognises his decades of outstanding service to the engineering community, his promotion of automated guided vehicle systems and mobile robotics, and his exemplary voluntary work.
The award was presented by Jean Haeffs, Head of the VDI Society for Production and Logistics (GPL), who, in his laudatory speech, paid tribute to Günter Ullrich’s career and his long-standing commitment.
Among those attending the ceremony were Prof. Dr.-Ing. Alice Kirchheim, Director of Fraunhofer IML and holder of the Chair of Materials Handling and Warehousing at TU Dortmund University, as well as Dr Thomas Sowa and Rouven Selge from the VDI GPL.
The VDI Medal of Honour thus recognises a commitment that extends far beyond individual projects and has helped shape the development of driverless transport systems and mobile robotics over decades.