Professor Dr.-Ing. Dorloff studied communications engineering and industrial engineering at RWTH Aachen University, where he also received his doctorate. In 1977 he was appointed professor at what was then the Comprehensive University of Essen. Here he was involved in the development of Business Information Systems. Until his retirement - and beyond - he devoted himself to research and teaching in the field of "procurement, logistics and information management". The focus is on the standardization of business data and transactions, the development of XML-based data exchange formats and the management of catalog data. His research thus makes an important contribution to the design of inter-company information systems, especially B2B e-commerce applications such as e-procurement systems and electronic marketplaces.

Prof. Dorloff's research is thus focused on a central subject of Business Information Systems: (inter-) operational logistics processes, the organization of procurement and information management. Standards are central to improving the efficiency of procurement processes and inter-company communication in general. However, the design of efficient standards is associated with considerable challenges. Procurement support standards should be capable of largely automating the search for suitable products. Among other things, this requires standardizing product catalogs so that the search for suitable products can be largely automated.

BMECat is probably the most important standard for the presentation of product catalogs. BMECat is based on a product (meta) model that allows not only the description of simple products, but also the mapping of product configurations. In addition, BMECat includes a versatile price model to be able to map dynamic price components in addition to fixed product prices. Frank-Dieter Dorloff and his team were actively involved in the development of BMECat. In addition, it has been involved in numerous committees in measures to further develop and disseminate the standard. An extensive list of relevant publications underlines its role as one of the leading experts in the design and management of product catalogues

Among his most important publications is the Handbook of Research on E-Business Standards and Protocols: Documents, Data and Advanced Web Technologies, which he published together with two colleagues.

Further information can be found on the web pages of the former research group.