The Open Industry 4.0 Alliance (OI4 Alliance) has announced a change at the top. Michael Riester will become the organization's new Managing Director from July 2026. He succeeds Ekrem Yigitdöl, who is leaving the Alliance after several years to pursue a new career path.

Yigitdöl was instrumental in setting up the OI4 Alliance. According to the organization, he helped to establish the alliance as a platform for open and interoperable automation solutions in the industry.

Dr. Christian Liedtke, President of the OI4 Alliance, paid tribute to his work, saying: "He has been a driving force within the Alliance from the very beginning and has made a significant contribution to building our community and organization."

Michael Riester, a long-standing member of the Alliance, is taking over the management. He has been involved in various technical and strategic projects of the OI4 Alliance since 2019. At the beginning of his career at Endress+Hauser, he took part in one of the organization's hackathons and was subsequently involved in several working groups.

Riester co-authored several white papers on the Asset Administration Shell (AAS) and was involved in the development of the OI4 Reference Architecture and the so-called "Guardrails". He also led projects such as "Open Operator Cloud", "Digital Twin Concept", "Instrumentation Management" and "Digital Quality Documents".

According to Allianz, the handover has been taking place in close coordination for some time. As Riester is moving directly from a member company to the organization, the change in leadership should take place without any major upheavals.

Commenting on his new role, Riester said: "The OI4 Alliance has been with me since its beginnings. Together with our members, we have laid important foundations for open, interoperable and practical Industry 4.0 solutions in recent years."

With the change in leadership, the OI4 Alliance intends to further develop its strategic direction. In future, the focus will be on open Industry 4.0 standards, data ecosystems and applications in the field of industrial AI. In addition, new innovation initiatives and technologies for industrial digitalization are to be driven forward.

The organization expects additional resources following the scheduled completion of the Factory X project. These will be used to develop new fields of technology. At the same time, Allianz announced the move to new offices in the Munich area in order to facilitate further growth and closer cooperation with members and partners.