Put pressure on: Wolf Matthias Mang (left) with Oechsler boss Claudius Kozlik at the company’s headquarters in Ansbach, where one of the world’s largest 3-D printer fleets is located
Image: Tobias Schmitt
The hidden champion Oechsler once revolutionized everyday driving. And with a future technology he is further ahead than many others. The company has one of the largest 3-D printer fleets in the world.
D.he death of the good old car handbrake began in Ansbach, in Middle Franconia, southwest of Nuremberg. An inconspicuous place for the end of a technical era. Oechsler AG, which was founded more than 150 years ago, has its headquarters here, a company that is well known in various industries, but hardly beyond that. A classic hidden champion. Plastic products that are manufactured using the injection molding process, the core business at Oechsler, do not attract much attention.
This is also the case with the automatic parking brake, which is now standard in modern cars and was conceived in Ansbach in cooperation with companies from the automotive industry. Oechsler has sold more than 200 million of these so far, not to auto companies themselves, but to suppliers such as Bosch, ZF or Hella. The inconspicuous parts, equipped with a bought-in engine, would be installed by all ten leading automakers in the world. The family company is the world market leader in this area, reported the chairman of the supervisory board, Wolf Matthias Mang, and his chief executive, Claudius Kozlik, in an interview in Ansbach.
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