DESY Director Dr. Hans von der Schmitt’s Term of Office Ended

The 5-year term of office of Dr. Hans von der Schmitt, member of the DESY-Directorate and head of the technical infrastructure division (Z-division) ended on June 30. He was specially concerned with the continuous increase of supply, customer orientation and labor efficiency of the technical service groups while resources were running short. His goal was to strenghten DESY for future tasks and major projects.

Dr. von der Schmitt

Dr. Hans von der Schmitt (right), member of the DESY Directorate and head of the technical infrastructure division from 1998 to 2003, with Dr. Jan Hendrik Peters, deputy of this division.

Shortly after he assumed office, he began analyzing the established working processes and communication flows and at the same time started to optimize the trans-sectoral processes. As a first “visible” result, he established a department for information management, processes and projects (IPP) in the end of 1998. This department is responsible for the creation and maintenance of the information management, which supports the realization as well as the transparency of the planned major projects.

So far, a great deal of the technical infrastructure of both DESY locations Hamburg and Zeuthen was integrated in the DESY Z-division. It included the mechanical and electronic workshops, the information technology, the assembly of accelerators and experiments and the industrial training, which has increased by a factor of one third during the past five years. (Currently DESY employs a total of 90 trainees.) With Hans von der Schmitt’s constructive assistance, just recently the first step has been taken within the framework of the projected new organizational structure: as of July 1st, the service groups of the “technical infrastructure” division will be incorporated into the other four divisions in order to optimize the task determined cooperation with all the specialized departments and to facilitate synergy effects with the technical groups of these DESY divisions.

More about the planned and approved major projects which are to be realized at DESY in the coming years: the two free-electron lasers VUV-FEL (start of operation in the end of 2004) and X-FEL (European X-ray laser, construction start in 2005) and PETRA III as a storage ring X-ray source (construction start in 2007).