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On the occasion of the anniversary there is a special key visual "30 years MicroStep"

30 years of MicroStep: of unique developments and bold dreams

In January 1991, ten academics initiated a worldwide success story in the Slovak capital Bratislava. In the anniversary year MicroStep has a lot on its agenda

Published 21.01.2021 | Erich Wörishofer

MicroStep is celebrating its birthday: What began 30 years ago with an idea, technical know-how and an irrepressible drive for action and research has grown from a small start-up to a global company with a rich portfolio, thousands of customers and a history full of unique solutions.

On January 18, 1991, ten academics signed the founding contract, and on January 21, the new company was officially entered into the commercial register. The start of a successful venture. "When we founded MicroStep, spol. s r.o. with our colleagues in 1991, we were all still employed at the Technical University in Bratislava. We were researchers with heart and soul. And this has not changed until today: Because in our new company we were confronted again and again with interesting development tasks that, incidentally, we would never have been allowed to deal with as university employees. What we have achieved with MicroStep on this basis today, we could not have imagined in our wildest dreams back then," recalls Ing. Alexander Varga, Ph.D., co-founder and head of development of the MicroStep group.

Intensive research and development have accompanied MicroStep's success story from the very beginning. There are many examples of groundbreaking developments in MicroStep in recent years: these include, among other things, the automatic, patented calibration unit; combined sheet metal, pipe, dome and beam processing as well as rotators for plasma, laser, oxyfuel or waterjet technology. The technologies developed by MicroStep are used in several thousand productions worldwide and have taken their efficiency and cost-effectiveness to a new level. Many of the innovations from MicroStep are unique and ahead of their time. In terms of precision and process reliability MicroStep sets standards, and in automatic bevel cutting it is considered a pioneer of an entire industry.

From the very beginning, MicroStep has consistently focused on the opportunities of advancing digitalization and automation. Always with the aim of enabling customers to produce even more efficiently and competitively as a result. In recent years, for example, MicroStep has placed a special focus on solutions for the fully- or semi-automated material handling of sheets, pipes or profiles as well as systems for storing sheets and sorting already cut parts. In this area alone, numerous innovations have been launched on the market, which are profitably used by customers all over the world every day.

Thanks to the unique solutions and the excellent support, well-known manufacturers such as Doppelmayr Seilbahnbau, Bosch, thyssenkrupp, Ikea, Villeroy & Boch as well as thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises from a wide range of industries trust in MicroStep's proven, custom-fit solutions and all-round service today. MicroStep is by now represented in more than 55 countries worldwide.

On board from the very beginning: Ing. Alexander Varga, Ph.D., Co-founder and Head of Research & Development at MicroStep

"What we have achieved with MicroStep on this basis today, we could not have imagined in our wildest dreams back then."

Ing. Alexander Varga, Ph.D.

Head of Research & Development | MicroStep, spol. s r.o.

Significant investments in the German-speaking markets

MicroStep Europa GmbH, based in Bad Wörishofen, Bavaria, is within the group responsible for sales and service in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Here, too, the topic of research and development plays a central role, especially when it comes to digitalization in the sense of Industry 4.0: "Our understanding of digitalization is that it can be a revolutionary optimization of industrial production above all when it is thought of holistically in the context of a smart factory and not as a purely isolated solution," says Igor Mikulina, managing partner of MicroStepEuropa GmbH. "For this reason, we founded the Industry Business Network 4.0 e.V. in 2015 with numerous well-known machinery and equipment manufacturers, software developers and component manufacturers – an association that jointly develops the foundations for cross-vendor networked manufacturing," says Mikulina, who is also chairman of the association. One result of the association's work is IndustryFusion, a cross-vendor open-source networking solution for smart factories and smart products.

In the anniversary year, we will continue to invest heavily in the German-speaking market area: "It is thanks to the dedicated work of all our employees that we are able to invest a total of more than five million euros at our two locations in Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia. We are building new training and demonstration centers including office space. In addition, a logistics center is being built in Bad Wörishofen. Thus, we will be able to even better meet the high demand for our unique technological solutions and our high-quality services in the fields of service and after-sales in the future," says Johannes Ried, also managing partner of MicroStep Europa GmbH.