Klaus Egner studied physics at the TU Darmstadt. After graduating with a degree in engineering, he trained technical business economist while working. Since 1998, Mr. Egner has been working for Merck KGaA, initially in the Automation department, where he was responsible for laboratories and in the field of chemistry. In 2004, his area of responsibility changed to the pharmaceuticals division with different areas of support (MES, production and packaging solids). In 2011, the implementation of Track & Trace in the packaging sector became step-by-step his main focus. Since Aug. 2019, he has been responsible for Track & Trace in packaging in a global function at Merck Healthcare KGaA.

The Pop in Your Job: I like digging deep into technical complexity to understand finally the full picture and making things operational. Learning about the interaction of technical and multi stakeholder based complexity provides an interesting extra layer for me.

Our pursuit is progress for people everywhere. That's why we take a closer look at things, ask questions and think ahead. We've been around for 350 years, yet our majority owners are still the descendants of Friedrich Jacob Merck, the man who founded our company in Darmstadt, Germany in 1668. Since then, we have become a truly global company, with 50,000 employees in 66 countries working on breakthrough solutions and technologies. In 2016, we invested a total of € 2.0 billion in research and development. We are Merck. The only exceptions are the United States and Canada. Here we operate as EMD Serono in the Biopharma business, as MilliporeSigma in the Life Science business, and as EMD Performance Materials in the materials business.