Honestly, can you still hear this talk of the crisis as an opportunity? These pre-punched PowerPoint sentences that you did your homework on product innovation during the crisis and are now going to overtake the market with groundbreaking new developments? For months now, we've had to listen to it, from the frits' joint around the corner as well as from the global player from Bielefeld.

Decisive is' on'm place or time for a mid-term review
You know, we people from the Ruhr area don't have a thing for yada yada. Adi Preißler once said: "Grey is all theory - important is the place," and with 168 goals he is still the record scorer for the BVB.

As a manufacturer of grinding machines and fair sports people, we are of course always happy when competitors, for whom we once had a lot of respect, want to advance the development of the industry. After all, everyone benefits - if something new comes out of it.

However, we find it quite amusing when a few manufacturers of grinding or milling machines now pretend to have at least perfected the production of knee joint implants if not just invented them. That's big capes, as they say in the pot, in High German: nonsense. It sounds to me like someone who's just about to make a fried egg wants to show Vincent Klink at his Wielandshöhe how to cook properly. So really...

1 million knee endoprostheses per year or experience makes quality

"Every tool must be made through experience," da Vinci once said. We at Haas Schleifmaschinen in Trossingen have around 10 years of experience in grinding artificial knee joints. More than 1 million knee endoprostheses are produced worldwide every year on our Multigrind® CB. That's a lot and there's a reason for it.

We were not there from the beginning (the first modern joint surface implants were developed in the early seventies), but our engineers know what they are talking about; and they also know what responsibility rests on our customers who make knee or hip joint implants. The knee joint is not only the largest joint in humans, it is also an extremely complicated matter.

No wonder that the implantation of an artificial knee joint is one of the most demanding operations and that the manufacture of the corresponding implants is a true supreme discipline for us grinding machine manufacturers. Whether a patient, such as the American actress and aerobic icon Jane Fonda (entertaining her blog entry about it), can be pain-free again after her knee surgery last year, depends not least on the quality of the implant. Compromises and a lack of experience in manufacturing can be quite painful and expensive. Who wants to risk that?

Continuous dressing or technical jumps instead of big slogans

In a few weeks time we will show you what a technical leap in development in the manufacture of knee implants looks like, live at the GrindTec in Augsburg and of course anytime at our premises in Trossingen.

Continuous dressing, for example, is such a technical leap. For the first time on a multi-axis grinding machine of the type Multigrind® CB the grinding wheels can be dressed during the grinding process. This ensures maximum dimensional accuracy and surface quality of the implant. And this is exactly what I understand by a genuine innovation; more on this can be found here.

Like I said, important is in the square. Or what do you mean?

Dirk Wember