Ottobock SE & Co. KGaA, formerly Otto Bock, is a company based in Duderstadt Germany, that operates in the field of orthopedic technology. It is considered the world market leader in the field of prosthetics and one of the leading suppliers in orthotics, wheelchairs and exoskeletons.
In 2019, the Ottobock Group as a whole generated sales of €1,002 billion with 8,367 employees worldwide.
History
Foundation until 1945
The company was founded on January 13, 1919 as Orthopädische Industrie GmbH in Berlin by a group surrounding a manufacturer from Krefeld, to supply prostheses and orthopedic products to the many thousands of war invalids of World War I. Otto Bock acted as production manager during this phase. He moved into the management of the company in 1924 and finally took over as sole managing director in 1927. At the end of October 1933, Bock, who had joined the NSDAP in May, had the old company liquidated and paid out the remaining shareholders. The company was renamed Orthopedic Industry Otto Bock in Königssee.
In 1920, production had been relocated to Königsee in Thuringia, where up to 600 people worked at times. Since the high demand could hardly be met by handicraft methods, Otto Bock began to mass-produce prosthetic parts, thus laying the foundation for the orthopedic industry. New materials were used in production, so that aluminum parts were already being used in prosthetics in the 1930s. After graduating from high school in 1935, Max Näder began training as an orthopedic mechanic and industrial clerk at Ottobock. In 1943, during wartime leave, he married Marie Bock, the younger sister of the entrepreneur. During World War II, the company employed forced laborers.
After graduating from high school in 1935, Max Näder began training as an orthopedic mechanic and industrial clerk at Otto Bock. While on war leave in 1943, he married Marie Bock, the entrepreneur's younger sister. During the Second World War, the company employed forced laborers.[7]
1946-1989
After World War II, when all the family's private assets as well as the factory in Königsee had been confiscated by the Soviet occupiers, the company settled in Duderstadt in southern Lower Saxony in 1946. In 1950, plastics were introduced into production for the first time. The invention of a braking knee joint with high stability, called the Jüpa knee, brought the economic breakthrough after 1949. Together with a newly developed balance device and two other apparatuses for prosthetic alignment, it was also in demand on the American market. In 1955, Ottobock exported the first 500 Jüpa knees to the U.S. The establishment of an American branch in Minneapolis in 1958 marked the beginning of the company's international sales structure.
In 1965, Max Näder introduced myoelectric arm prostheses to the market. For the first time, light and fragile as well as heavy objects could be grasped with them. In myoelectrics, weak electrical voltages control the prosthesis. Another development was a fitting solution for modular leg prostheses. The pyramid adapter, patented in 1969, connects the prosthetic foot, knee joint and stem and allows static corrections as well as the exchange of the modules. It remains an integrative element of innovative joints to this day.
1990 until today
After reunification, Hans Georg Näder took over the management of the family company from his father Max Näder, the son-in-law of company founder Otto Bock, in 1990. In the same year, the company was able to reacquire the old Ottobock site in Königsee. Today, manual wheelchairs, power wheelchairs, rehabilitation products for children and seat shell bases are produced at the former headquarters.
After a five-year development period, the world's first microprocessor-controlled knee joint, the C-Leg, was presented at the World Prosthetics Congress in Nuremberg in 1997. The company's 90th anniversary was also marked by the launch of the C-Leg.
To mark the company's 90th anniversary, the newly built Science Center Medical Technology was inaugurated in Berlin in June 2009. Until 2019, this building near Potsdamer Platz served both as a venue for the public exhibition Begreifen, was uns bewegt, and as a venue for congresses and seminars. On January 1, 2009, the subsidiary Otto Bock Mobility Solutions GmbH based in Königsee emerged from HealthCare. At the end of 2011, the old logo with the original signature of Otto Bock was replaced by a new international logo.