2006 Award Winners
Pioneering achievements in the Technical Advisory Service (TBD)
Special Prize Winner Prof. Dr.-Ing. Eberhard Birkel
The jury of the Löhn Prize recognises the outstanding achievements of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Eberhard Birkel at the Technical Advisory Service (TBD), which he led for 37 years with confidence, dedication and great success.
Eberhard Birkel was born in Stuttgart, where he studied mechanical engineering at the university. He then joined Daimler-Benz AG as a development engineer specialising in process development and joining technology. In 1963, he moved to the then state engineering school – now the University of Applied Sciences in Esslingen – as a senior building officer.
In 1969, the first five Technical Advisory Services were established at universities – in Esslingen, Aalen, Karlsruhe, Mannheim and Offenburg. Eberhard Birkel became their director and remained in that role until his retirement in 2006. The Steinbeis Foundation was founded in 1971 – later than the TBDs – and incorporated the advisory services. The Technical Consultancy Services were the forerunners of today’s Steinbeis Transfer Centres, which were initially spin-offs from the TBDs.
A unique selling point of Steinbeis is its ability to offer solutions for many small problems across the full spectrum of technologies, whilst also providing comprehensive support for highly specialised technologies right through to large-scale contracts. The profile of the ‘broad-spectrum professors’, as exemplified by Eberhard Birkel, was and remains exceptionally important. It was this very profile that made the specialised Steinbeis Transfer Centres possible in the first place.
Eberhard Birkel was one of the cornerstones among the TBD directors. During his ‘tenure’, he coordinated more than 10,000 projects. Each year, between 30 and 60 professors worked for his TBD, along with the same number of university staff and students. Whenever successful professors worked at the TBD, the Steinbeis headquarters offered them their own specialist centre. In Esslingen, this led to numerous direct and indirect spin-offs of Steinbeis Transfer Centres. It is an outstanding contribution on the part of the TBD directors to consistently pass on revenue to the spin-off Steinbeis Transfer Centres, precisely because their success makes this possible. Eberhard Birkel has enjoyed sustained success over a long period, and for this he deserves special recognition for his achievements.