HAINBUCH receives TOP 100 seal 2026

Award recognizes innovation management and performance of the German workholding and automation specialist

Marbach am Neckar, Germany – A reward for sustained innovation: Hainbuch GmbH has been awarded the TOP 100 Seal 2026 – in Size Category C (more than 200 employees). The recognition places HAINBUCH among Germany’s most innovative mid-sized companies. The official award ceremony will take place on June 26, 2026, at the Congress Center Heidelberg, as part of the German SME Summit.

At HAINBUCH, innovation is not is not accidental — it’s systematic. The TOP 100 evaluation does not focus on individual inventions; instead, it assesses innovation management and innovation performance. Professor Nikolaus Franke (Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration) and his team examine more than 100 criteria in five categories: Innovation-friendly Senior Management, Climate of Innovation, Innovative Processes/Organisation, Outward looking/Open Innovation, and Successful Innovations.

Innovation at HAINBUCH: »Smart solutions« – and the courage to try something new

HAINBUCH is a leading manufacturer of solutions for clamping, change-over, measurement, and automation for milling, turning, and grinding on machine tools. The family-owned company has been based in Marbach am Neckar since 1951 and operates worldwide with eleven subsidiaries.

HAINBUCH is defined by a blend of Swabian ingenuity, hands-on practicality, and a clear customer focus. Doers, thinkers, and developers share one mission: to continuously simplify, advance, and automate workholding processes.

The company’s innovation culture is closely linked to the spirit of the owner family. Gerhard Rall, owner and inventor of the SPANNTOP principle, sums up this mindset: »We want to make our customers successful and strive for excellence and smart solutions. We would rather fail with an innovation than succeed by copying.« 

This attitude has shaped HAINBUCH for decades – from the breakthrough in workpiece clamping with the SPANNTOP principle in the 1970s to today’s solutions for reliable, connected, and automation-ready manufacturing. Examples include intelligent IQ clamping devices and the automated centroteX AC quick change-over interface for changing over entire clamping devices in automated manufacturing processes. Innovation also shows up in everyday execution: every year, HAINBUCH develops more than 1,000 custom solutions together with customers for demanding clamping applications.

»For us, the TOP 100 Seal confirms that our commitment to innovation is lived throughout the entire company – from the idea and the process to measurable customer benefits. We invest specifically in technology, know-how, and collaboration to make manufacturing easier, more precise, and more automatable,« explains Sylvia Rall, Owner and CEO.

Press releaset: HAINBUCH receives TOP 100 seal

About the TOP 100 competition

Since 1993, compamedia has been awarding the TOP 100 seal to medium-sized companies for exceptional innovative strength and above-average innovation success. Since 2002, Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Franke (Vienna University of Economics and Business). The mentor of TOP 100 is former German President and Minister President Christian Wulff. Project partners are the Fraunhofer Society for the Promotion of Applied Research and the German Association for Small and Medium-sized Businesses (BVMW). The media partner is manager magazin, and the cooperation partner is ZEIT für Unternehmer.