Since December 16, 1994, a federal ordinance has protected the name of the city of Solingen. The name may be used in trade only for cutting wares that were processed and finished in allen wesentlichen Herstellungsstufen, in all essential stages of production, within the Solingen industrial area. That area covers the city of Solingen and the neighboring town of Haan. The goods must also be fit for their purpose in material and workmanship. The ordinance lists products from scissors and razors to nutcrackers and corkscrews.
manufacturing
What the Label Promises
German courts judge the label Made in Germany under the ban on misleading advertising and ask what buyers understand by the label. Since a ruling of the Federal Court of Justice in 1973, the test has been the maßgebliche Herstellungsvorgang, the decisive manufacturing process in which the goods receive their defining qualities. That process must take place in Germany. In 2014 the Higher Regional Court of Hamm ruled on condoms made from blanks produced abroad. They were moistened in some cases, packed, sealed and checked in Arnstadt in Thuringia, and the court ruled that they could not be advertised as made in Germany. In 2011 the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf ruled on knives made in China and only polished in Germany. Die bloße Endbearbeitung reichte dafür nicht aus. Final finishing alone was not enough.
The Annual List of Defects by Car Model
Every year the German inspection organizations publish the TÜV-Report, the results of the main vehicle inspection, the Hauptuntersuchung, model by model. The TÜV-Report 2026 appeared on 20 November 2025. It is based on about 9.5 million inspections from July 2024 to June 2025. More than one car in five, 21.5 percent, had major or dangerous defects. Among cars two to three years old, the Tesla Model Y came last of 110 models, with a defect rate of 17.3 percent. The Mazda 2 was the overall winner.
BMW’s Expert Career
In November 2019 the BMW Group introduced an expert career across the whole company. Its board member for human resources, Ilka Horstmeier, called it “einen gleichwertigen Karriereweg zur klassischen Führungslaufbahn”, a career path of equal value to the classic management career. Both paths are of equal value and open to movement between them, the company said. The expert career is not limited to selected departments or qualifications. Siemens had introduced expert careers in 2006.
Containment First, Then the Permanent Fix
In its rules for 8D reports, Hella, a German supplier of lighting and electronics for cars, sets out how its own suppliers must answer a complaint about a defective part. The 8D report first asks for Sofortmaßnahmen, immediate measures. These apply to the part under complaint, they are temporary, and the supplier must check their effectiveness constantly. Corrective measures come next. They must ensure that a defect does not occur a second time, and the long-term measures should stop the problem permanently and reliably. A final check confirms that the measures were carried out for good. The German verb in Hella’s rule is abstellen, to remove a defect, and here it must be removed dauerhaft und verlässlich, permanently and reliably.
Blotting Paper and Nylon
In 1908 Melitta Bentz developed the ready-made disposable coffee filter. She used blotting paper from her son’s school exercise books. Until then, coffee was filtered through ordinary funnels with filters of cloth or blotting paper. On 20 June 1908 the Imperial Patent Office granted her a utility model. In 1958 Artur Fischer brought his plastic wall plug, made of polyamide, onto the market. German Wikipedia calls it the most successful wall plug in the world for decades. The first industrially made expansion plug had been invented in 1910 by John Joseph Rawlings. Before that, a piece of wood was set into the wall with plaster or mortar. Fischer filed more than a thousand patents and utility models. In 2014 he received the European Inventor Award for his life’s work.
Quiet Repairs
German car owners know the official recall, when the Federal Motor Transport Authority orders a repair. Advice pages also describe a quieter kind, the stille Aktion, the silent campaign. It usually concerns comfort features such as the air conditioning or the multimedia system. The car magazine Auto Zeitung explains: Hier erfolgt die Reparatur heimlich beim nächsten Werkstattbesuch und ohne offiziellen Rückruf des Autos. (Here the repair is made secretly at the next workshop visit, without an official recall of the car.) Owners who do not go to an authorized workshop usually miss out. The magazine’s advice is to ask the dealer, who has access to the database.
The Analysis of Possible Failures
In the car and aerospace industries, and often elsewhere, a new product or process goes through an FMEA, a Fehlermöglichkeits- und Einflussanalyse, an analysis of possible failures and their effects. A team from different departments lists what could fail, where and how. For each possible failure it describes the consequences and identifies the causes. The aim is to avoid failures from the start rather than to find and correct them later. A general German standard for the method appeared in 1980 as DIN 25448. In 1996 the German Association of the Automotive Industry, the VDA, published an improved version. Since 2019 the car industry has used a common handbook of the VDA and its American counterpart, the AIAG.
The Workshop Owner and the Young Physicist
Carl Zeiss trained for four years as an apprentice mechanic. In his time, microscopes were made by Pröbeln, by trial and error. Zeiss wanted to build microscope optics from calculations instead. A first collaboration with a scientist produced no result. On 3 July 1866 the 50-year-old Zeiss began to work with Ernst Abbe, a 26-year-old lecturer in mathematical physics at the University of Jena. Abbe’s task was to put the workshop’s microscope production on a secure scientific foundation. The first microscope built from his calculations performed worse than the old ones. The work was finally completed in 1872. After that, no competing product surpassed the quality of their microscopes.
Maturity Level Zero
The German Association of the Automotive Industry, the VDA, has a method called Reifegradabsicherung für Neuteile, maturity assurance for new parts. It measures how mature a project is at agreed points in product development. The scale runs from maturity level 0 to 7. Level 0 is the Innovationsfreigabe für Serienentwicklung, the innovation release for series development.