Joachim Milberg


Joachim Milberg is a German engineer and manager who served as CEO of Bayerischen Motorenwerke AG. He was Chairman of the Supervisory Board of BMW until July 2015.
Milberg was Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Technische Universität München. He was Member of the Board of Management for Production of BMW and became CEO when Bernd Pischetsrieder had to leave because of the Rover problems. Milberg stopped the Rover venture and reestablished the BMW success story.
Milberg was the founding President of acatech - the German Academy of Science and Engineering.

Early life

Milberg grew up on a farm in Sennestadt, today part of the city of Bielefeld. From 1953 to 1959 Milberg went to secondary school. From 1959 to 1962 he trained as a mechanic at Gildemeister AG and, from 1962 to 1965, studied production engineering at the State Engineering School Bielefeld. He continued his studies at the Technische Universität Berlin with a scholarship of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes and obtained his Dipl.-Ing. in 1969. From 1970 to 1972, he was research assistant at the Institut für Werkzeugmaschinen und Fertigungstechnik of the Technischen Universität Berlin. In 1971, he was awarded his doctorate in production engineering.

Career

In 1972, Milberg became senior manager at the machine tool factory Gildemeister AG. From 1978 to 1981, he was head of the Automatic Lathe Division.
In 1981, Milberg became full professor for machine tools with business administration at Technische Universität München, head of the Center for Production Automation and Robotics in Munich and the Production Application Center in Augsburg. From 1991 to 1993, he was Dean of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering.
In 1993, Milberg became member of the board of management of BMW, responsible for production. After having just overseen the successful launch of the BMW 3 Series, he was named by the supervisory board of BMW – then led by Eberhard von Kuenheim – as the company’s new CEO in 1999. He succeeded Bernd Pischetsrieder, who resigned along with Wolfgang Reitzle, another manager widely viewed as potential successor at the time. He was heavily criticized by the German media for BMW's decision to sell its unprofitable U.K. subsidiary Rover in 2000. In 2002, he decided to step down a year ahead of schedule and handed over to Helmut Panke, in an effort to avoid media speculation about who would succeed him in what would be the final year of his tenure at BMW. He subsequently became chairman of the supervisory board in 2004.

Other activities

Corporate boards