Managing Director Michael Fritz remembers the founding years of Quality Automation GmbH
“In the year 2000 I received a very interesting enquiry from the company M.Braun Intertgas-Systeme GmbH in Garching near Munich. The contact came about because I had already worked with M.Braun in several projects in the position at my then employer and had got to know the company as a reliable partner. M.Braun now wanted to equip all systems supplied to Asia with a control system from Mitsubishi Electric. According to the request I was to develop, build and commission the control system on site! This sounded like a very attractive and exciting project to me. My colleague Heinz Monnartz was also enthusiastic and so we decided to found Quality Automation GmbH. Self-employment was something I had been thinking about for a long time, especially for me, and the fact that Heinz was so involved at the time was really great!
The first automation projects were all intended for the M.Braun company. However, further projects with new customers quickly followed.
The first company headquarters was in an office building called Dienstleistungszentrum (service centre) in Stolberg. It consisted of only 2 offices — but with only 3 employees in the initial phase, this was sufficient. But then things accelerated quite quickly: as we already had seven employees at the end of 2001, we moved to our current company headquarters at the beginning of 2002.
With the new customers came new requirements and tasks, which we also wanted to accomplish. This was only possible through continuous growth and development of our know-how. At present, Quality Automation has more than 50 employees and is thus one of the largest companies for automation technology in the Cologne-Aachen area”.
QA from foundation until now
A short journey through 20 years of Quality Automation