Eppendorf factory tour

As part of winning the Eppendorf Prize, I was invited to tour the Eppendorf factories in Hamburg. Eppendorf were thoughtful hosts throughout, giving my family personalised guided tours of every aspect of the company. I was intruiged to learn about Eppendorf's early history as a post-WWII manufacturer of medical devices, such as turning military sonar principles into a prototype ultrasound. In those days everything had to be done on minimal resources and maximal ingenuity. Now the company is all German precision and efficiency. 

I was really surprised to see that the PCR machines were so lovingly put together by hand, more an engineering enterprise than a factory floor. The scale is still small enough that it doesn't make sense to automate, and the desire for quality drives the personal attention each gets. At the other end of the scale, the plastics factory was almost complete automation, constantly injection-molding millions of tips and tubes. But even there the almost obsessive attention to quality was obvious - with most of the set-up dedicated to quality control. Everywhere we went there was a real pride in the company and in the quality of their work. At the end of my tour Eppendorf presented me with a personalised pipette, a P100 with my name laser printed on it. I haven't done any pipetting for seven years now, but the pipette has a place of honour on my desk. 

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[Office setup]

thanks for sharing