HAPPY 25TH BIRTHDAY igus® UK
Its igus® UK’s 25th Birthday this week, so we wanted to share with you 25 facts about igus®
– Enjoy!
- The name “igus®” is derived from the German phrase Industrie Spritzguß which means the technology of moulding.
- igus® employs around 3000 people in the world.
- All employees and visitors at igus® receive free food in the igus® canteen, every day.
- igus® was one of the first industrial companies to put a website address on a print advertisement in the UK.
- In the UK, igus® can be found on average at an exhibition every 4 weeks.
- igus® UK’s longest serving employee is Dave Spence who has been with us for 22 years.
- igus® does not have a typical hierarchy of management, instead igus adopts a “solar system” where the customer is at the centre and everyone is a manager.
- One of the fastest growing areas in igus® is the installation of e-chains® on site at the customer.
- igus® is the first (and so far only) company to manufacture 3D printable engineering plastics.
- igus® started making plain bearings before e-chains®.
- The reason why igus® launched the chainflex® cable range is that all other cables failed when used in e-chains®, igus® developed and manufactured a cable which did not.
- Although now retired, the founder of igus®, Gunther Blase is still very involved and visits the factory most days.
- Both the smallest and largest plastic e-chain® in the world is made by igus®.
- igus® launched the first e-chain® electronic catalogue on floppy disk in 1991.
- In 2011 igus® manufactured the first plastic bearing range made from bio-polymers in the world.
- You can buy over 100,000 standard catalogue products from igus®.
- As well as moulding all components, igus® also has their own on-site tooling company called i-form.
- The igus® factory in Cologne was designed by Nicholas Grimshaw. His other famous designs include Heathrow AirportT5, Leicester space centre.
- Based on a sales engineer making 16 visits a week, one sales engineer over 25 years would have made 19,200 customer visits.
- For 25 years the slogan at igus® has been “in today out today”, the goal is that all customer orders are shipped within 24 hours.
- A team member of igus® UK marketing once had a UK top 10 hit single.
- An igus® UK sales man once played for Norwich City.
- An igus® UK director once represented England for rifle shooting.
- The most unusual insurance claim by igus® UK so far is when a race horse jumped on a company car and flattened it.
- igus® bearings were used in one of Lenny Kravitz guitars.
