On the occasion of this year’s internal audit on August 26, 2026, we bid farewell to our long-time quality management representative, Dr. Hansgeorg Thiele, after more than 25 years of successful collaboration. Over this long period, Dr. Thiele has become not only a valued business partner but also a friend to our company.

Our Deputy Head of Inspection Services, Björn Schöber, along with Managing Directors Björn Hansen and Thorsten Flor, presented him with a gift to thank him for his many years of valuable support.

Dr. Thiele established our quality management system in 2001. That same year, under his leadership, we received DAP accreditation in accordance with DIN EN ISO/IEC 17025, which was later converted to DAkkS accreditation. To this day, Dr. Thiele has played a key role in the ongoing development of our quality management system and has supported us in meeting the ever-increasing requirements of DIN EN ISO/IEC 17025 as well as the DAkkS guidelines.

Throughout this long period, he has also guided us through numerous external and internal audits and, with his experience and expertise, ensured that system-related deviations remained the exception rather than the rule.

At the same time, Dr. Thiele served for many years as a Level III inspector responsible for the certification of our Level I and Level II personnel in accordance with SNT-TC-1A.

Even before GfR was founded, Dr. Thiele had worked closely with our company founder, Wilfried Hansen. Among other things, both worked together at the BFI Betriebsforschungsinstitut of what was then the Verein der Deutschen Eisenhüttenleute, from which GfR emerged. It was there that the foundation was laid for their later successful and long-standing collaboration.

GfR will now restructure its staff in the areas of quality management and personell certification. This will ensure that we can continue to reliably and sustainably meet the requirements of our accreditation in the future.