dr. e sommer
knowledge engineering & systems architecture
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exec summary
  • Senior SAP variant configuration consultant with 12 years of experience and a series of successful implementations; PhD in artificial intelligence
  • Leading expert on variant configuration and the IPC product configurator with almost exclusive focus on firms using product configurators for the last 12 years. Latest experience with SAP ECC 6, IPC 4.0 and ISA 4.0
  • Strong project management skills with over 18 years of professional IT experience
  • Deep hands-on experience with involved technologies and techniques: artificial intelligence, java, web, databases, client/server programming, XML, SAP SD MM PP PS CRM PLM
  • Broad industry experience, ranging from automotive, hi-tech and furniture manufacturing to consumer products, heavy industry and DNA synthesis.
  • Multilingual English, German, French, basic Italian and Spanish, international experience with projects in North America and Europe; EU citizen.
 eSommer picture
info at esommer dot net
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projects
space pictureesommer.net : projects : print version
education
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1965-1984 Attended German, American & international schools in Germany, Switzerland, the United States, South Korea and Saudi Arabia.
1984 Abitur (German baccalaureate after 13 years of primary education) in Bonn; ranking top 10% (grade 2 on a scale from 1 to 6)
1985-1991 Computer Science, with a minor in Computational Linguistics and Communications Research, at Bonn University
1991 Diplom-Informatiker (M.Sc. in Computer Science) Bonn University; ranking top 5% (grade 1 on a scale from 1 to 6)
til April 1996 Dr. rer. nat. (PhD in natural sciences) in Computer Science/ Artificial Intelligence, Dortmund University (Prof. Dr. Katharina Morik) with honors (1 as above).
experience
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1988-1990 Research assistantship at the German National Research Center for Information Technology (GMD), including publications and representation at conferences & trade fairs
since 1989 Translation of scientific material, including (German to English) the book P. Wisskirchen: "Object-Oriented Graphics", Springer, Berlin, 1990
1991-1996 Research scientist at GMD (Artificial Intelligence Group, industrial applications)
1996-1998 IT consultant in the Caribbean, Germany
1998 - 2002 Senior Consultant, European operations of IntelliCorp, Mountain View, CA, USA
since independent consultant, knowledge engineer & systems architect, esp. product configuration (see Project List)
languages
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German mother tongue
(American) English native speaker (first language, nine years of primary education at American and British schools, 19 years of residence abroad, including six years in the US.)
French fluent (seven years school French, prolonged working and vacation visits to France, projects for french clients)
Italian basics
  • Java
  • Prolog
  • Lisp
  • Visual Basic
  • SAP Variant Configuration: Dependency definition language
    • Constraints
    • Procedures
    • Preconditions & Selection conditions
  • scripting languages
    • tcl/TK
    • Perl
    • Unix shell (sh, csh, bash, ksh, tcsh)
    • awk
    • Frontier (UserTalk)
 		expert
C(++), ABAP/4, Pascal, Ada, FORTH, FORTRAN fluent
assembly languages, COBOL, PL/1 not my favorites, but some experience
information technology
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Expertise (of varying depth ..)
  • Expert systems aka knowledge-based systems
  • Knowledge & information management
  • Data Mining aka Machine Learning
  • SAP R/3 (SD, MM, PP), esp. Variant Configuration and e-commerce CRM, SCE/IPC
  • Object-oriented design & programming
  • Web tech / e-commerce
    • java servlets & applets, JSP, struts, client/server, etc.
    • cgi
    • apache, IIS, PWS
    • MS SQLServer, Oracle
    • PHP/mySQL, Zope, Python
    • Manila/Radio Userland/Frontier
    • etc.
  • Graphical user interfaces
    • Lisp Machine Flavors
    • HyperNews
    • tcl/TK
    • VB/ActiveX
    • Java Swing, JSP
    • javaScript
    • HTML, DHTML
  • Networking (LAN, WAN, VPN, P2P, Internet)
  • Inter-process communication (RFC, RPC, XML-RPC, SOAP, COM/OLE/DCOM, Corba, ODBC/JDBC, Sockets, Pipes)
  • Business process re-engineering (BPM, process diagrams, Workflow)
Programming see Languages
Text processing etc. LaTex, Emacs, HTML, MS Office, Frontier, etc.
Platforms Unix/Linux/Solaris, Mac, Windows NT/95/98/2000