The founders Petra and Dr. Dieter Feitsch already became familiar with the subject “Safe handling of hazardous substances” in parallel to their university studies.
Dieter Feitsch worked as part of the BMAS-sponsored research project “GeSi” (Gefahrstoffe und Sicherheit (Hazardous Substances and Safety) at the Professional Association for Ceramics and Glass in Würzburg, Germany (today merged with the Verwaltungs-Berufsgenossenschaft – VBG (Administrative Professional Association).
The aim of the project was to develop software support for the implementation of the Hazardous Substances Ordinance of 1986 with regard to hazardous substances operating instructions for member companies and beyond.
The completion of the funded project coincided with the completion of the university studies of the founders and in 1991, led directly to the foundation of the company ComSoft for the further development and marketing of the GeSi software, with Petra Feitsch as the Managing Director. The offices were located in the technology and incubation centre in Würzburg, Germany.
As a young software start-up, the Feitsch Gesellschaft für Software-Entwicklung mbH was founded in 1993. Shareholders were Dr. Med. Dieter Feitsch and Dipl. Mathematician Petra Feitsch. Petra Feitsch became the Managing Partner of Feitsch GmbH.
The software from the project was developed further and the existing individual modules were combined into a single program. Up to this point, the focus was on the creation of operating instructions based on data from safety data sheets, which were recorded in the software for this purpose.
In 1994, the software was expanded by including the subject of hazardous substances administration in the form of a hazardous substance register, followed by a module for risk assessments according to ArbSchG. Then as now, the guiding principle of the founders was: Safe Chemicals – Safe Working Environment.
Starting from 1996, GeSi software was completely redesigned from DOS software to a Windows application and was introduced to the market in 1998. It goes without saying that even then, all user data could be fully transferred from the existing dBase format to the new database in MS Access format.
Feitsch GmbH had grown further by this time and in 2001, it moved from the technology and incubation centre to the Kaiser Straße in Würzburg, Germany.
In addition to internal occupational health and safety, the GeSi software was expanded in 2004 to facilitate the classification of mixtures for safety data sheets in accordance with the EU directive. As a result, the manufacturers of chemical mixtures were also addressed as a target group and the obvious synergies of a hazardous material software were used in full. The customers of these manufacturers did and still have an international focus and consequently, multilingual capacities were also added through the use of a phrase catalogue.
In the period from 2009 to 2013, the GeSi software was gradually reprogrammed. As a Java application, GeSi is now on the market as GeSi³, the third generation since 2013. Since then, the GeSi software is platform independent and uses an SQL database.
The GeSi software GeSi³ consists of three software packages, which are integrated in a common interface and share the data: Creation of safety data sheets, management of hazardous substances and organisation of risk assessments.
With the new generation of software, the company also reached a new stage in its development and was rebranded to “GeSi Software GmbH” in 2017.
The drive for the continuous improvement of the GeSi software is described by founder Petra Feitsch:
„We are passionate about simplification: making complex laws easy to apply in many businesses. Contact with users is very important to us to ensure that the software meets their exact requirements. Easy & Safe.“
Since the beginning of 2018, GeSi Software GmbH is located in the heart of Würzburg, Germany, in the Juliuspromenade. A particular feature of the new premises is a separate training room for software training courses.