1949 to today

From Engineering Consultancy Herbert Stein

to Textechno Herbert Stein GmbH & Co. KG

In the early days of the textile industry the idea of quality must have already played a major role. However, aids to understand the quality of textile products were rare and mainly restricted to the human eye or hand by which parameters such as regularity, strength and elongation, density and thickness, purity and colour or general defective or perfect conditions were determined.

Later hand-driven mechanical devices for mechanical-technological tests were developed and so quantitative statements for single quality parameters were already possible. As early as in this stage first tendencies towards automation could be observed, e.g. in the tensile testing of yarn by exclusively mechanical techniques.

The third stage and, so far, the last of textile quality control and its equipment is characterised by the quick development in electronics, which led to the technology of microprocessors and finally to the computer, which - today - opens up possibilities of machine control as well as measured data processing which a few years ago seemed impossible.

The founding of the company Textechno can be fixed at approximately the same time as the beginning of the third stage. A first entry of engineering consultancy Herbert Stein, the legitimate predecessor of the present company Textechno, can be found in the Register of Business in Mönchengladbach on April 1st, 1949. At this time the young enterprise - with six employees - still resided in three rooms in a worsted spinning mill in Mönchengladbach. Besides the manufacturing of textile testing equipment the company concentrated on research work in the field of textile measuring and testing techniques which, later, led to the foundation of the Institute for Textile Measurement.

Textechno building on Regentstrasse

For the time being, this building with its textile past (the first owner ran a textile trade there for many years) offered enough space to extend the manufacturing capacity according to the increasing demand for Textechno testing instruments.

The cosy atmosphere of the old building with its nooks and crannies is still a vivid memory for many employees, not only because of the good working - but also because of the perfect party conditions.

The new building on Dohrweg

1997 a further Textechno facility with three employees has opened in Chemnitz in co-operation with the friendly company Keisokki, Osaka, Japan. The tasks of this subsidiary are sales and technical support in the eastern European regions for both parent companies as well as other suppliers.

Textechno and Lenzing managers