Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. August-Wilhelm Scheer, born on July 27th 1941, was director of the Institute for Information Systems (IWi) at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) at Saarland University from May 1979 until February 2005, with his major field of research being information and business process management in manufacturing, service industry and administration. Since March 2005, he is a consulting professor at DFKI.
In 1984, he founded the international software and consulting company IDS Scheer AG which maintains subsidiaries in 27 countries. In 1991, the book „ARIS Architektur integrierter Informationssysteme – Grundlagen der Unternehmensmodellierung“, which contains the basic design of the ARIS Toolsets developed by IDS, was released. In 1997, he founded IMC AG (Information Multimedia Communication AG) and is supervisory board chairman of both companies today.
In 1997, Professor Scheer was awarded the honorary doctorate of the Pilsen University (Czech Republic) for his scientific merits for the development of methods to design information systems and for the analysis of business processes. Since November 1999, he is the Saarland’s minister-president’s authorized representative for the fields of innovation technology and research.
In 2001, he founded the August Wilhelm Scheer foundation for science and art. In July 2001, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Saarland by its minister-president. In October 2001, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Hohenheim University. In October 2003, he was named Entrepreneur of the Year in the category “Information Technology”.
In 2005, he was awarded the Erich-Gutenberg-Prize and the Federal Cross of Merit, First Class, of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Since 2006, he is a member of the Advisory Board for Innovation and Growth of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2007, he was elected president of the Federal Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM).