MMM Group Brand Guidelines: Munich’s 1954 Steriliser Maker, Still Owned by the Koller Family

Operating tables, an American licence and a first steriliser.

MMM stands for Münchener Medizin Mechanik. The company says the GmbH was founded on 21 May 1954 in Munich by Johann Koller with four partners, Karl Strobl, Martin Ritzinger, Johann Huber and Ulrich Wolf. The Süddeutsche Zeitung, in a September 2023 profile, gives the early story: the firm opened on Implerstraße in Munich and first made operating tables, then Koller obtained a licence from American partners to produce steam sterilisers, and in 1957 it delivered its first steriliser to the German market.

Growth came through manufacturing in Bavaria. The company says that in 1961 it won a gold medal at the Munich crafts fair, the Handwerksmesse, for the Selectomat, which it describes as the first high-pressure steriliser with automatic control. In 1964 it opened a factory at Stadlern in the Upper Palatinate; the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported in 2023 that this was the largest of the group’s four production sites, with about 300 staff, and that the company trains industrial mechanics and industrial clerks there.

Two moves in the early 1970s set the shape of the business. In 1972, the company says, MMM bought Küster-Hartmann, a Siemens subsidiary in Berlin that made steam sterilisers, and in 1973 it moved its headquarters from Implerstraße to Planegg, just outside Munich. The Süddeutsche Zeitung confirms that the head office has been in Planegg since 1973, with a test laboratory and training rooms on the same site.

Steam, washers and low-temperature systems.

MMM’s range covers the main machines of a hospital sterile-services department, which German hospitals call the AEMP. Its steam sterilisers include the Selectomat line, with a Selectomat PL Compact Line launched in 2016, and the Vakulab PL Compact Line of 2018, the company says. Cleaning came later: MMM says it entered washer-disinfector technology in 2012 by taking over a Getinge plant at Peiting in Bavaria, and the Uniclean family followed, from the PL II 15 and the large ML to the compact PL II 10 and the PL II 30, which the company says takes 36 DIN instrument trays. The Uniclean PLE 3 is designed for flexible, heat-sensitive endoscopes, and in 2020 MMM introduced the Hyper LTS 150, a low-temperature steriliser based on hydrogen peroxide.

A second division, Life Science, sells sterilisers, washer-disinfectors, pure-steam generators such as the Unotherm HL, and heat technology to pharmaceutical, research and laboratory users. The company lists the Fluipharm, its first hot-water spray steriliser, as a 2009 launch. The Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that the US subsidiary supplies large pharmaceutical firms, and that the Charité in Berlin and the Ludwig Maximilian University’s biocentre at Martinsried use MMM equipment.

The newspaper also described the shift from single machines to whole departments: MMM now plans and builds complete processing units for medical devices. The company says it built its first modular AEMP for the University Hospital Regensburg in 2017, and in 2014 it founded MMM Healthcare International GmbH to bundle turnkey projects abroad. It also runs an academy offering sterile-processing courses, and the Süddeutsche Zeitung noted that hygiene certification courses for nursing staff are held at Planegg.

Sterile processing as a visual world.

Sterilisation equipment is bought by hospital engineers, infection-control teams and the managers of sterile services departments — the rooms where used surgical instruments are washed, checked, packed and sterilised before they go back to the operating theatre. The makers describe their ranges in the order of that route. Getinge calls washer-disinfectors the first step in the reprocessing flow, then moves through sterilisers to the racks and trolleys that carry sterile goods back into the hospital.

The imagery of the category is practical rather than decorative: stainless-steel chambers, sliding or hinged chamber doors set into a wall, loading trolleys, wire baskets and instrument trays folded into blue sterilisation wrap. STERIS notes that its steam sterilisers are “often referred to as autoclaves” and sorts them by how many instrument trays fit in one load; Getinge groups its range into steam sterilisers, low-temperature sterilisers, loading equipment, and trays and baskets.

Many of the larger names grew by buying other companies, so their brands are layered. STERIS still sells steam sterilisers under the AMSCO name of the American Sterilizer Company, which it bought in 1996. Getinge folded Maquet, Atrium and other acquired names into a single Getinge brand in 2017, keeping some of them as product-family names. The makers in this set are based in the United States, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, Italy, Israel and China.

The trade meets at a few large fairs. MEDICA, the medical-technology fair, is held in Düsseldorf. In Dubai, the show founded in 1975 as Arab Health now runs as World Health Expo Dubai, a new name announced at its 50th edition, TradeArabia reported; its 2026 edition moved to Expo City Dubai, Gulf News reported.

A family company from Planegg with sites across Europe.

MMM became international from 1980, when it set up its first subsidiary in Switzerland, the company says; Austria followed in 1987, the United Kingdom in 1997 and Poland in 2002. In 1992 it took its first stake in Chirana, the predecessor of BMT in Brno in the Czech Republic, and it acquired the remaining shares in 2007. It opened a production site at Monroe in the United States in 2006 to supply the pharmaceutical and food industries, and in 2008 it took over Schaerer Mayfield France in Lyon. The Süddeutsche Zeitung reported in 2023 that MMM had 17 branches from Austria to the United States, was represented in more than 90 countries, employed about 1,200 people and also produced in the Czech Republic. The company now gives its workforce as more than 1,300.

Ownership has stayed in the family. The company says that in 2005 Johann Koller transferred a 52.5% holding to his son Michael Koller, who later acquired the whole company and became its sole owner; since 2009 long-serving managers Michael Geutler and Robert Eibl have run the business. The Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that offers from American buyers had arrived before, and that Koller had recently said he would not sell.

The group now presents itself as MMM Group, with the line “Protecting human health” on its website, and says its technologies are made in Germany. Its product names, such as Selectomat, Vakulab and Uniclean, are registered marks, and the company published a Festschrift on its origins and future.

For a design guide, MMM Group shows how a three-letter abbreviation can carry a long German company name into many export markets. Compare Getinge, the Swedish group whose Peiting plant MMM took over, and Belimed, a Swiss maker of sterile-processing equipment. For this guide we use a navy, a night ink and a brushed steel grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep MMM Group’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.