Shaking Stereotypes
How to be a trailblazer of diverse leadership. 🏹
The Fortaco team would like to send our warmest thanks to everyone who joined our webinar – Breaking Barriers, Women in Heavy Industry, sharing the inspiring and supportive space with us.
The event brought together representatives across different industries.
Special thanks go to our great panelists who shared tons of valuable and encouraging experience and knowledge from their successful and lengthy careers. 💬 ✨
According to the participants, authenticity and motivation in the webinar atmosphere were appreciated, reminding us that openness about shared challenges is valued and needed. In addition, how to overcome those challenges and turn them into future strengths.
The general view is showing a gender gap in leadership positions in heavy industry and unfortunately this is true.
According to UNIDO, only 25% of the global manufacturing workforce are women - when we look into heavy industry sectors, the percentage is even lower. If looking at leadership roles, only 8% of them are held by women. 💡
This is a shame, not only due to diversity but also regarding engagement and collaboration, as the teams led by women seem to gain up to 20% higher performance in those.
What are the barriers holding women from advancing in their careers within the industry? 💭
Two of the biggest ones are bias and stereotypes.
The great news is that things are changing, and gender does not hold the same value as it used to when choosing people for leadership roles. We all are respected more for our actual skills, knowledge and performance.
In Fortaco, we are on a path of making heavy industry a more diverse field to work in and normalizing female leadership. We will continue to connect people around the industry and hold the space for them to share their journeys and practices.
One of the most asked topics in the webinar was mentoring in a career path; how experienced female leaders support younger leaders in their development path. This and many other topics you can listen to in our future webinars. 🎙
👉🏻 See webinar statistics here
‘We’re all IT at Fortaco’
Piotr Galiński runs Fortaco’s IT department with a philosophy of family—one that produces results so good it’s won accolades from SAP.
He was gobsmacked by the cake. “On my very first day at Fortaco, I found that my colleague Ewelina Klimkiewicz had brought a cake for me,” says Mateusz Janiszewski, Fortaco IT Manager. “She had baked the cake, not bought it! I had never experienced anything like that before.” Janiszewski had worked in IT roles at four companies in Poland before he arrived at Fortaco. He knew immediately this was not your standard IT department.
Just like ‘family’?
The Fortaco IT team is, by design, a lean department. Led by Piotr Galiński, it is a team of 13 people who work closely together, so closely that they often find they are a part of each other’s lives. It's how Janiszewski found himself at Galiński's home, celebrating his boss's 40th birthday. "I'd only been at Fortaco one year, and it’s pretty uncommon in Poland for a worker to visit the boss's house. This is very different than any other IT group I've been a part of."
Galiński has a clear philosophy when it comes to employees: hire only true experts he can place his trust in, and then give them broad responsibility. This approach is a direct result of his personal experience. “I’ve had good bosses and bad bosses. Once I was part of a good team, and then the boss came and started hiring people who weren't very good for a variety of reasons. Once we took on inferior hires, people started to see the company was moving in the wrong direction. I'm always comparing our team to the army. I don't want to go to battle with soldiers I can't trust, who aren't skilled, who can't drive the tanks. I want to be surrounded by the people I trust and leave decisions to them. I once thought of myself as only a technical person with an IT and mechanical engineering background, but I committed myself to learning soft skills. What I've learned is that if I try new techniques, if I trust my intuition, then I get better results than I expect.”
Galiński’s team members often use the word “family” to describe their relationships. Does this come from higher up in the Fortaco organization? “I’ve never said ‘build a family,’” says Lars Hellberg, who built Fortaco Group and served as the organization’s CEO until December 2024 and is now a member of the Supervisory Board. “But we’ve seen it can become that. We emphasize and empower engagement among our people. And when people are working closely together, if they’re engaged, then a family-like environment can happen. I think the IT department has grown into that approach. Our Narva, Estonia business site is another example of where people have become very close.”
Sticking together
“But a family approach can also mean that you’re too family like,” cautions Hellberg. “There’s the risk that you might not fully listen to your customers, and so it has to be balanced.”
Striking that balance is something that is constantly on Galiński’s mind. “Yes, it is like a family, where everyone is comfortable together and we support one another. But this ‘family’ is embedded in a professional environment. Families release frustrations on each other, and so you have to have some clear boundaries, as well as give feedback to keep your team from becoming unproductive.”
His team members agree. "The close relationships help us in difficult situations,” says Aneta Szczepańska-Rybka, Finance Business Process Owner, who until recently was part of Galiński's team, and continues to support Fortaco’s SAP S/4HANA implementation. “But families fight, as well. Not every moment is harmonious bliss!" Galiński’s personality and approach somehow combine to allow him to diffuse tensions. “It's easy to give good feedback,” she says. “But when Piotr gives negative feedback, he has the ability to do it in a way that motivates you. After the meeting you’re more motivated and not in a bad mood.”
“When a boundary is crossed,” Galiński says, “I don’t ask someone why he said or did this, I ask what’s up with their private life. If I know what’s behind the behavior then I can provide support. I want to address the root cause of the problem, not the symptoms. Otherwise, the problem may persist.”
Still, it’s not an approach that every manager is capable of using. But for Galiński it produces results. “The advice from my superiors has often been that, because of the risk of having to fire someone, creating a family environment isn’t a good idea. They would not build relationships like I’ve done. Are they right? I have thought a lot about this, and I’ve concluded that because you never know when you might have to let someone go, I’m willing to risk the bad emotions. I want to live in an environment where we have these good relationships. Also, my team is not too big. If I ever had to release a person, it would mean I’d have to get rid of one of the critical processes.”
But the risk of releasing someone isn't something often on the minds of the team, and they say it's dwarfed by the positive aspects of the culture. "Piotr built his team in a way that this style really works," says Szczepańska-Rybka.
No excuses
Where does the motivator turn for his motivation? One source for Galiński is Nick Vujicic, who’s been called "the happiest man in the world." Vujicic was born with Tetra-amelia syndrome, a rare disability characterized by the absence of arms and legs. Vujicic, who calls his ministry “Life Without Limb,” travels widely and speaks about his faith.
Galiński sometimes invokes Vujicic when attempting to solve a problem with his team. “There are always problems but there is a solution to every one of them, and I challenge my team to find it. My job is to guide them in the right direction, and push them to focus on what we'd like to achieve, instead of why we can't achieve it, which only produces barriers that cause your brain to be blocked before you start thinking. Nick Vujicic surfs, he dives, but he's got no legs or arms. Nick’s not looking for excuses, so why should we!”
The taste of failure
There is no mould for a Fortaco IT worker, but Galiński says one commonality is an interest in sports. “This is critical for me. How do they release stress? If you're a sportsman then you know the taste of failure. You know how much energy you have to put in to improve. You know about sacrifice. Whatever the sport, I’m curious about how much time a potential employee spent to prepare and whether they tasted failure. Success doesn’t usually come after the first attempt. If it does, then it can make you lazy.”
For a period of five years, Galiński practiced karate five times a week for two hours a day. It enabled him to beat an opponent who was 25 kilos heavier and place third in the open division. Now he likes to climb mountains. To climb Mont Blanc he practiced in Poland’s mountains with a heavy pack. Would he summit? He was more interested in challenging himself: “I looked at it this way: Every step I took from Chamonix, I was beating my old record.”
Pioneers?
Another commonality of Fortaco IT team members is an affinity for new technology. “We’re a brave team,” says Galiński. “When it comes to picking solutions, we’ll go for the new technology.”
“We try a lot of new stuff and sometimes we fail,” says Mateusz Janiszewski. “But we’re discovering some really cool stuff, as well. For example, we’re one of the first companies using Cloud ALM to manage changes in the SAP system. ‘Pioneers’ is a big word, but we’re one of the first. We know it's at an early stage, but we can try it out. It's not about being comfortable—it’s about making progress. Yeah, sometimes you get into some trouble. But if you're not in trouble, you're not learning. When you fail, you learn how to not do it. And you don't repeat that same mistake twice."
Sometimes “pioneers” is precisely the right word. In 2024, Fortaco Group was selected as the Gold Winner of the SAP Innovation Awards in the Migration to Cloud category. “It’s not easy to convince customers to think about tomorrow,” says Radoslaw Mierzejewski, SAP Delivery Manager responsible for Poland, discussing why Fortaco received the honor. “But Piotr’s team is always trying to predict what might happen next and how to be prepared for it. It’s just their mentality to be open to change.”
What made Fortaco’s IT situation particularly challenging was the fact that not everyone was familiar with SAP. “Fortaco had many years’ experience with SAP, but they bought companies that weren't familiar with it,” says Marek Gałuszewski, Head of SAP Consulting Poland. “It can be treated as a problem or barrier, but Piotr decided to use this situation as opportunity for today and tomorrow. The idea was to avoid the complicated integration of different systems and processes, how to efficiently use time, and how to optimize the cost of the future maintenance. By making this decision standardize, Piotr made the solution more flexible for the future, and the Fortaco team also decided to use SAP Partner and use SAP as quality assurance in the project.” In other words, Fortaco making the brave decision to standardize processes across the entire Fortaco Group.
‘We’re all IT’
Though the IT department's culture is somewhat different, Agnieszka Koziara, SVP People & HR, says many of the traits found in the IT department can be found widely in Fortaco, as well. “Even though we’re international, we’re still relatively small. Fortaco needs people who are doers, who are hungry to learn new things, because there isn’t an army of people behind you. You’ve got to be a self-motivator. But if you like to learn things, then Fortaco is a great place for you.”
Koziara herself is one example. “I’m not an expert on AI or IT, but I’m part of the AI team because I like to learn. I see the development. I see that AI is growing so fast you can’t avoid it. She views Fortaco’s IT team as both strategy and teacher. “All of us have to be part of IT development, whether we’re in production, the office, or management. If we want to survive as an organization, we have to invest money, time, and ourselves to be part of IT. This is a must. In this way, we’re all IT at Fortaco.”
Fortaco’s SmartCabin: The Automotive Standard Comes to Off-highway
Fortaco’s SmartCabin System bring the comfort and convenience of the automotive world to the off-highway industry. But it’s far more than an aesthetic plaything—it makes off-highway equipment more powerful and efficient.
If you happen to have driven a Hyundai Ioniq 5 or a Mercedes EQS, then you’ve experienced today’s state-of-the-art automotive interiors technology. The systems are veritable rabbit holes of customization options, enabling, for example, nearly endless interior brightness and lighting options. Torn between ocean blue or jungle green? No problem. The car can gradually shift between colors as you drive. Now imagine this experience – but the most powerful, practical parts of it – brought to the off-highway world. Fortaco is the first to offer it in a hardware-independent system.
Fortaco Cloud – connectivity to SmartCabin
The automotive standard in off-highway. Fortaco SmartCabin is equipped with state-of-the-art automotive technology to benefit the off-highway industry. SmartCabin combines cloud connectivity, infotainment, cabin controls, HVAC, driver authentication, preventive maintenance, camera systems, and monitors in one easy-to-use package. “All of these things that you used to have to buy separately are now available in one package,” says Jussi Kangas, Fortaco's Director for System Technology.
For Fortaco customers, the system means that moving cargo in a port gets a lot more efficient and a forklift driver’s work a whole lot more comfortable. “In a port you might have 10 operators per forklift,” says Kangas. “When an operator is identified by the machine, the electric seat moves to his preferred position. His radio stations are displayed. Machine-related parameters are activated to control how the vehicle reacts to his commands, such as the sensitivity of joysticks and what its movements mean. The navigation system, integrated with the terminal operating system or ERP, means the machine tells the driver where to pick up a pallet. He no longer wastes time looking for things in a crowded port.”
Safety, looks, luxury
Features can be broken down into the categories of safety, looks, and luxury.
Safety means detecting humans working around the vehicle, those a driver might not otherwise see, reducing lost time on a job site. It means the machine can maneuver better in tight environments, speeding work. An automated wiper system means better visibility, and customizable lighting means less stress on a driver's eyes. The cloud connection means supervisors can monitor exactly how many hours a driver has worked, and there is integration with scheduling and fleet management systems. There's a service connection for the machine control system, so tires are kept at the right pressure and oil changes are done on time. If the forklift is electric, compressor efficiency is monitored and maintenance is done before failure, preventing costly downtime.
When it comes to looks, the high-end automotive processors offer great graphics. “Aesthetics really matter,” says Kangas. “Some drivers may not care, but they're very important for the manufacturer who has to sell the vehicle.
And luxury? Who could object to remote starting a vehicle to preheat it in a cold winter or pre-cool it in summer? “It does whatever you tell it to in a certain defined sequence,” says Kangas. “It’ll heat the steering wheel, the seat, defrost the windows, detect outside temperature and adjust cabin climate accordingly. The standard in the automotive industry is fast becoming the standard in off-highway.”
Beyond gains in safety and efficiency, Kangas notes that the system offers savings when it comes to hardware costs. “Since we’ve taken what used to be multiple systems and incorporated them into one, the hardware cost for all of this drops.”
Manual switches coming back
If you’ve driven automobiles with these systems, then you know that sometimes it can be puzzling to find a basic feature that used to be operated with a simple switch. “Our team likes to talk about a new car where the glove box had to be opened by finding a button in a submenu,” laughs Kangas. “Some things are just a bad idea!”
Kangas says that each function must be analyzed, with consideration given to where a user would think to look for it, or whether we can automate the functionality. “Safety-related functions need direct, immediate access. What we’re seeing is that some of the manual switches are coming back, because they simply make sense.”
Fortaco SmartCabin - available now
There are, of course, other automated hardware solutions in the off-highway marketplace, but Fortaco SmartCabin is the only hardware-independent solution. SmartCabin is available for customers in spring 2025, with the first customer in the materials handling business.
It’s a natural solution in an industry where OEMs are more ready than ever to outsource areas of production outside their core competencies. “We’re seeing more and more that our customers view their business as moving tons of rock or cargo, rather than simply selling drilling machines or cranes,” says Kangas. “OEMs are keen on keeping their own designs for steel frames or booms, which is natural, but they are increasingly willing to outsource actions where companies like Fortaco can really add value.”
We are at bauma 2025 on April 7-13 in Munich
See Fortaco’s SmartCabin in action at Bauma 2025, the world's leading trade fair for construction machinery, building material machines, mining machines, construction vehicles and construction equipment. Visit us in hall A6, booth 225.
Fortaco Gliwice: Innovation in Steel Processing and Beyond Best-in-Class Efficiency
If you think operations like cutting, bending, and shipping are too basic for innovation, then you need to visit Fortaco’s Gliwice business site.
Strike up the band
Silesia, a region of about 40,000 square kilometers that lies mostly within Poland, but also the Czech Republic and Germany, has one of Europe's richest industrial pedigrees. Rich in minerals and natural resources, including a coalfield of 4,500 square kilometers. It has been mined since the 18th century, and the region is synonymous with heavy industry. It is only natural that a steel fabricator like Fortaco would have a home here.
On October 3rd, 2024, Fortaco inaugurated its Gliwice business site. In keeping with Silesian tradition, the opening ceremony included a performance by the Knurów City Mining Orchestra, the majorettes of Scarlet Knurów, and was followed by a tree-planting ceremony and ribbon cutting. It was a succession of old traditions, brought out to honor the region’s newest, Fortaco’s Gliwice business site, the very first business to open in Knurów’s Economic Zone.
Important in Gliwice, Important in Fortaco
“The original conception of this business site was to make ready-to-weld components that we'd previously outsourced to several suppliers or were being produced at our Wrocław plants,” says Jarosław Szytow, General Manager of Fortaco Gliwice. “We are able to both gain knowledge and increase efficiency in the company.”
And efficiencies in one Fortaco plant are passed down the line to others. At Gliwice, steel components are fiber laser-, plasma-, and oxygen cut, press bent, and milled on CNC machines. AI tools are used, and 3D scanners employed for a very fast Production Part Approval Process (PPAP). The supply chain is improved by kitting operation and shipping, in the beginning, directly to the welding stations in Fortaco’s operations in Janów Lubelski and Wrocław. Even in an industrial area like Silesia, welders are hard to find and expensive. Efficiency matters.
All of this is done in a 35,000-square-meter building, a greenfield project that will employ 250 when ramp-up is complete. But that is only the beginning. "We will eventually process 40,000 tons of steel in this plant,” says Szytow. “In 2025, we’ll add a robot welding line to produce advanced steel structures. Fortaco Gliwice will bring a lot of pioneering solutions to the off-highway industry.”
Innovation beyond production
Mention robot welding and it’s easy to conclude that Fortaco’s Gliwice business site is state of the art. But robots are just part of the process, and it is of equal, if not greater importance, that innovation is found in other key aspects of business. At the Gliwice business site, innovation comes from everywhere.
As components are cut, bent, and milled, they are kitted on custom-made pallets, which are shipped directly to the production line in other Fortaco plants. Jan Olovsson, Fortaco’s supply chain expert, has worked with the Fortaco team to make the facility’s logistics state of the art. “Welders are a scarce resource, so what we do here helps optimize their labor in other factories.” Olovsson characterizes it as constant experimentation and innovation in the name of efficiency. “We don’t yet have the production numbers to tell you what the gains are,” he says. “But we believe, and our experience shows, that this way of working is the path to the highest efficiency.”
The most innovative ERP
Innovation is also present in the way Gliwice approached its ERP system. It is using a brand new SAP S/4HANA cloud solution. "Not only does a cloud solution mean you don't acquire hardware and a data center, but it's safest place to keep your data," says Piotr Galiński, Fortaco Group's IT Director. But choosing the right tool is only the start. You have to get the systems up and running. And that's extremely challenging with greenfield projects.
"Greenfield development typically takes one-and-a-half to two years," says Galiński. “And the Gliwice factory was only on paper in 2022! Without an actual factory we had to decide how material would be moved, what devices and processes to employ. We had Jarosław the GM and one technical guy. And then we hired Gosia." Gosia, or Małgorzata Lesisz, came on board as Logistics Manager. With Lesisz taking the lead, the team went live with full SAP functionality after a mere five months.
“How could we do it?” asks Galiński. “Because of the team that Jarosław built. We had hundreds of decisions to make, discussions based only on our imaginations. Everybody had to imagine how the process would look like."
Lesisz compares the planning and decision process to childbirth. “This factory is a child which has been born. Now we have to raise it.” The child will be raised with what she calls a planet passionate approach. “For example, we're using an electro-permanent magnetic traverse for internal transport. These planet passionate solutions in our supply chain and logistics process are the most modern available. This means not only efficiency, but a high level of safety.”
‘Greenfield’ is the magic word
Silesia’s industrial history means that it is a magnet for skilled workers, engineers, and other manufacturing professionals. It also means that the region’s unemployment rate is approximately two percent. So how does Fortaco compete for the 250 team members it is eventually going to need?
“Greenfield is the magic word,” says Jarosław Szytow. “In this region everyone who wants a job has a job. As GM, I have to create a feeling of importance in the work. Because the sense of importance attracts people with passion, and from passion come professionalism. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, whether cleaning or operating a machine, both are important.” Szytow says the team will be composed of highly experienced people but also welcoming to those with less experience who want to develop their skills. “Highly experienced people are needed for a quick ramp-up. If you have only fresh people, it can take one to two years to ship product. We have one experienced person and two or three new ones on every team. There’s a transfer of knowledge. It means teamwork is critical. We promote it from the very first day.”
So if Fortaco builds it, will the workers come? They are already, in fact, says Agnieszka Koziara, Senior Vice President People & HR at Fortaco Group. “What we’re hearing is that we’re attracting automotive workers in the region, because our work is very interesting and they find Fortaco has an automotive culture where they feel at home. Fortaco’s top priority is safety, quality based on the Toyota Way, with whom we have partnership.”
80 tons of steel
To start with, Fortaco’s Gliwice business site will produce 8,000 new product implementations through summer 2025. “Sometimes we supply a piece of cut metal,” says GM Szytow. “Other times we’re producing something extremely complicated. It’s not massive production, so we have to be very flexible with our production processes. You’ll notice very wide corridors between our machines on the factory floor. That’s because the parts we make range from less than a single kilo to more than five tons in weight! We have to accommodate everything.”
Szytow sees the business as a logistics hub, rather than only production. “At our peak, we’ll have 12 trucks arriving each day with steel sheets and more than a dozen trucks leaving with finished goods. Greenfield is a blank canvas. We will write our futures together.”
Lars Hellberg, Fortaco Group President & CEO, is ready to that and has pen in hand. “We've grown significantly over ten years, and we're known in the market," he says. "Fortaco processes 80,000 tons of steel, and at that quantity it is beneficial to centralize 50 percent of the annual consumption at Gliwice, while the remainder is managed by Fortaco Estonia or through outsourcing. With the technology we're installing in Gliwice, we can automate processes even further, deliver high quality parts that improve welding robot accuracy, and make things overall more accurate and safer at the same time. Mills used to deliver steel plates to four Fortaco locations. Now, with Gliwice, we can narrow that to two. It all plays into efficiency."
In 2014, before the economic downturn, Hellberg speculated that Fortaco would become a billion-euro company. “At the present time, I'm not saying that's wrong,” Hellberg smiles. “As a group we've got ambitious plans for growth. And I believe we'll get there.”
Fortaco’s Crusader for ‘Why?’
Andrzej Wrona, Fortaco Group’s Operations Development Director, loves to ask why. He’d like you to do it, too.
After graduating university as a mechanical engineer, Andrzej Wrona's first job was in a company that supplied airbags to the automotive industry. He was asked to participate in continuous improvement programs, invited to Six Sigma, but his bosses never shared the big picture. The company had lean practitioners who played simulation games. "We referred to them as the Entertainment Department," he laughs. "It was a very mechanistic approach. I did what was asked, but nobody ever told me why."
After a few years he moved on to Wärtsilä, which was just beginning to set up a lean program. "Since I came from that environment, and because we were supported by Professor Peter Hines, whose career was dedicated to understanding the true lean, I asked if I could join." In the Wärtsilä culture, he learned why. "I understood that true lean is enabling people, getting a bottom-up commitment. That's what I'd been missing before." He studied the Toyota Way and learned that asking why was essential. "I loved that we were invited to question everything. Why are we using such a heavy tool for testing? Why are there missing parts for product assembly? Why do we have to spend time correcting the product?"
Small steps, big impact
From Toyota he learned that small improvements made every day can amount to major improvements. "Sometimes we have big dreams that never come true, but consistent small steps can have big impact. An organization is like an iceberg. Above water are the processes you can see, but what's below is the culture. If it's a good culture, then middle managers and production heads are very interested in what people on the line have to say."
Wrona is a big fan of Toyota kata. "Kata is a Japanese word meaning form. In martial arts, it's about practicing a set of movements until you become perfect. Say you have the goal to produce 10 pieces per week instead of four. The Toyota philosophy says give people the goal, then have reviews. Ask what experiments they did. Did they make progress? How much? What else could we try? It's not about having a clear action plan that could lead you where you don't want to be. It's one action at a time. You see how it goes. If it's not helping, you do something else!"
The 1 a.m. message
One day when Wrona was at work in 2013, Lars Hellberg, who had left Wärtsilä to run Fortaco, invited the Wärtsilä team to Fortaco to talk about their lean journey. "I pushed my superior to be in this meeting and I met all the reps from Fortaco sites. I saw that they were just beginning to think about how to build a lean program, which I'd been doing for five years at Wärtsilä. A couple of weeks later, I was changing planes in Sweden and thought of Lars. I sent him a LinkedIn message at one o’clock in the morning, asking if he needed any help. He called me the next morning."
On March 1, 2014, Andrzej Wrona began work at Fortaco.
Let people play
Fortaco's Operations Development team is seven members strong today, and it is active with all Fortaco factories, though not always with direct support. It also carries out group-level projects, and supports new factories, such as the greenfield project in Gilwice, Poland.
"Fortaco Group's acquisitions mean that we have a lot of new colleagues, new regions, new cultures, and new technologies," says Wrona. “Every business unit is different when it comes to volume and product complexity, and when it comes to lean each has a different level of maturity. We need to develop an appropriate approach for each site. Our job is to explain why. People will implement something if you ask them, but if they know why then it makes all the difference."
Wrona’s leadership style seems to be a good fit in a modern Fortaco organization which is a merger of many cultures. “I hate micromanagement,” he says. “Like when you have top management talking about the color of the floor. I can’t tell my teammates how to make an app. I tell them the direction, the priorities, and I make sure they’re not overloaded with work, because multitasking is a fight, not development."
The Toyota Way
Key in building a lean culture has been Fortaco's collaboration with Toyota. "Toyota UK has a charity program where you pay a reasonable price per person whom you send to their UK factory to learn about the culture of seeking value. All that money goes to a children's charity. We've sent over 100 people over the years. Toyota even came to our Holič factory to teach us their approach to problem solving on a challenge we’re struggling with. Everyone who works with Toyota comes away with the understanding that knowledge is in the people, and you just have to create an environment that allows them to make things better."
Wrona is extremely proud of his team, as well as the entire Fortaco organization, for what they've been able to accomplish with this philosophy. In addition to the Kaizen culture, the OD team is pushing Fortaco to become digital. He says Fortaco's progress with digitalization is partly a result of Covid when travel came to a halt. "We couldn’t go anywhere, so we started developing apps. It was just a trial, but now we have three full-time app developers. Top management at the business sites are big believers in what we do, and thanks to their support we've seen results in financials.
The future Fortaco?
If you ask Wrona to predict the future, he’ll quote the motto of the OD department: Make tomorrow safer and better. “Everyone has two jobs. One is their daily job, and the other is to improve their daily job. How do we do things differently and reduce losses? We want to challenge the status quo.”
He believes the current generation of people joining Fortaco has a different outlook than his generation. “They’re not the type to take a job if they don’t understand their place in the bigger picture. It’s in their nature to ask why. Today's schools are producing Instagram people rather than welders. Robotization and AI are very interesting for today's graduates.” These young people can be partly credited with the drive to automate at Fortaco. Wrona sees this as an opportunity. After all, if you want to make something better, just ask the people.
Fortaco’s Tech Tinkerer
Before Arkadiusz Adamczyk joined Fortaco in May 2023, he was responsible for the production of 10,000 buckles per week for the world’s largest automotive safety belt maker. When you buckle into your car, there’s a good chance it’s Adamczyk’s work that keeps you safe. Now he’s working with production in smaller quantities, but says big equipment has big stakes. “We’re making maybe 10 loader frames per week, but with big equipment you don’t want a single mistake.”
As part of Fortaco’s Operational Development (OD) team, Adamczyk works on the analog side. His job title is Lead Manufacturing Engineer, but Inventor might be more apt. “I make jigs to make machine operators’ lives easier and more efficient. I prepare a lot of small jigs with CAD software and make 3D models of them. I recently made a small jig with a special pocket to a machine operator work faster and more efficiently.” He says working with jigs keeps him happy. “I can invent something, and I love the challenge. It’s not like working for NASA where the sky is the limit in terms of budget. In at technical factory you need a good and cheap solution.” Adamczyk has also designed pallets to transport products more efficiently, and he’s part of the team developing production solutions for Fortaco’s new 34,000-square-meter production facility in Gliwice, Poland.
He frequently travels to Fortaco factories to solve problems in Poland, Finland, or wherever he’s needed. “I like that I get to experience the variety of cultures in the Fortaco world. It’s great for both professional and personal development, and it gives me energy for new solutions and inventions.”
Whether at home or at work, he’s tinkering with CAD software and 3D printers. At home, he may make a Fortaco-logoed cell phone cover. At work, he produces small-scale 3D models of design ideas which can be passed around a conference table and discussed. One idea he’s currently experimenting with is replacing welded objects with 3D printed versions to make them cheaper and more efficient. “Instead of welding a sleeve to a plate, I believe we might be able to 3D print the whole thing. But I haven’t reached the testing stage yet.”
He’s also tinkering with AI and playing with how he might use it in production. “I now prepare jigs using CAD software. If the next day I need something similar with different dimensions, I should be able to ask AI to do it. If I can connect AI with CAD, then I can modify the jig with a prompt.” He’s figured out how to connect CAD and AI, but he’s still gathering information before he puts it into practice. “It’s a big step. I’ll feel like Neil Armstrong on the moon when it happens.”
From the Shop to the Top
Peter Hietalahti’s commitment and development pays off over 18 years at Fortaco
“From the shop floor to the top floor” is an often-exaggerated expression to suggest someone started at the bottom of an organization. But it’s literally true with Peter Hietalahti, whose first job at Fortaco was sweeping the factory floor and cleaning cabin windows. It was 2006, he had just completed his obligatory service in the Finnish Air Force, and he was casting about for something to do. So he answered an advertisement in the newspaper.
Of course, sweeping floors and cleaning cabin windows wasn’t the main job, but it was a way to witness up close how the Kurikka production line worked. He was soon assembling forklift cabins and then forest crane cabins, too.
Hietalahti liked the cabin business and wanted to learn more. He enrolled in the Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences to study engineering. But he stayed on at the factory, rising at 5 a.m., arriving at the factory at 6, finishing his shift at 2 p.m., and then going to school until 9 p.m., after which he drove 80 kilometers to his home in Nummijärvi. It was a four-year-long test of his commitment to his profession, not to mention a course in night driving on sometimes icy roads.
Good things tend to happen to Hietalahti in May. He was promoted to Production Planner at Fortaco in May 2012, and finished his engineering degree one year later on his 27th birthday in May 2013. In 2014, an organizational change meant production planners took on more customer communication responsibilities, making Hietalahti the main customer contact for handling cabin orders, and his assembly-line background was a benefit. “When pricing a job, I understand the production process, how parts are placed, how the line moves, and it makes estimating assembly costs a lot easier.”
But there was no end to Hietalahti’s curiosity about manufacturing. In 2017, he enrolled in a Masters of Engineering program and graduated in 2019. In 2021, he joined Tomi Metsä-Ketelä’s team as a Sales Engineer. “My main job was strategic communications with the customer. If they had a question, they contacted me.” He was also tasked with updating cabin prices to reflect the costs of cabin materials, and verifying that the labor calculations were correct. “Sometimes a customer requests changes, and we need a new offer. Or we have new options or model changes. To account for changes in component prices, we usually agree with the customer to update prices once per year.”
Working in Metsä-Ketelä’s team, Hietalahti learned the nuances of pricing and negotiations. In May 2024, he started as an Account Manager. “I’m now taking the next step with responsibility for areas where I previously did background or support work,” he says. “In recent years, rapid cost inflation has caused tough situations and tough negotiations.” In a way, his job is like a top-level diplomat’s: Sometimes he has to deliver bad news but still make everyone happy. “Fortunately, customers are professionals and they understand the challenges, even if they don’t always like hearing the news. But the process is more than just prices, and it’s very satisfying work when everybody gets a solution that works for them.”
The month of May seems to hold some magic for Hietalahti. Since May is when his academic degrees and professional promotions have come, he has the habit of calling these his “birthday gifts.” But it’s clear no one is gifting him anything. He’s earned every bit of it through hard work and commitment.
A Fascination with Teamwork
Fortaco Operational Development’s Kamil Zdeb studies motorsports to learn about improvement in teamwork.
When he studied computer science in university, Kamil Zdeb learned to use machine learning to detect predisposition to heart attacks. Now, he’s putting that experience to work for Fortaco. “When you compare medicine to industry,” he says, “the problems are different but the solutions are similar. Machine learning and data analysis can be used to solve production problems, too.”
Recently, Zdeb developed a proof-of-concept heat map of Fortaco’s Jaszbereny plant. Also called a spaghetti diagram, an overhead camera records all movements of employees. “Based on this video, we can see where people are moving, optimize routes, and move tools to more convenient places, for example,” says Zdeb. “It’s not a factory-dependent tool, and we’ll use it wherever we think there’s a problem we can solve with it. Operational Development’s role is to be out in front, to be proactive. It’s important to have solutions ready for use.”
In the year and a half Zdeb has worked with Operational Development (OD), things have changed a lot. “We no longer advertise our services, and people come to us. They know what we can do.” He says the OD team has more work than it can handle, so like a medical team in triage, they have to evaluate the patients. “We evaluate two things when choosing projects. First, how much will it help, and, second, how engaged they are with making the best tool possible—because actions speak louder than words.”
Zdeb has a fascination with the way human beings work together, in both work settings and beyond. Outside of work, he’s developed a fascination with racing, IndyCar in particular, the highest class of regional North American open-wheel racing. (Like Formula 1 but with a wider range of tracks. F1 cars maneuver faster, but IndyCars have a higher top speed.)
Motorsports and industry are similar, Zdeb says, in the way cooperation leads to constant improvement and better performance. “I’m not a gearhead who knows about the internal workings of the cars. But I really appreciate the machines they’re building and the way the teams cooperate to achieve their results. Since IndyCars are pretty similar – they can only develop some components – the differences in performance come from how well the engineers cooperate and how they work with the driver.”
Using similar tools to those he employs at Fortaco, Zdeb analyzed 2022 statistics available on the IndyCar website. “I analyzed how every driver competed, the circuits he competed in, the distribution of top finishes, and I reached the conclusion that hiring the right people and equipping them with the proper tools are major factors in success. All other things equal, the best teams win.” He also reached a conclusion about perception levels, “When someone is either the best or the worst, we’re likely to remember him if he’s having a good season. But the drivers who are consistently good seem to fly under our radar.”
If there’s a lesson there for the industrial race, it may be that glory isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. A team that’s firing on all cylinders may not get the attention it deserves, but it may be doing some of the best work in the industry.
Conquering Fear On and Off the Factory Floor
Mateusz Kożuch likes extreme sports because they teach him about the nature of fear. And that has application on the factory floor.
They call it a “dream jump,” though you’ve got to be a special kind of dreamer to climb hundreds of meters up a tower and leap, free falling 90 percent of the way down before a system of dynamic ropes and pulleys bring you to a halt. Fortaco’s Mateusz Kożuch is that kind of person. And he’s equally enthusiastic about manufacturing.
Kożuch got his first taste of production at Toyota, where he started as a trainee on the factory floor, responsible for the development of databases that kept track of foundry machines and mold breakdowns. At the time, he was a recent electronic engineering graduate with a knowledge of IT, and he was puzzled that he hadn’t been assigned to the IT department. “But I quickly realized it was a great opportunity, because I was developing a tool for people in production. I could make the database work for the people who actually used it.” After his trainee program, he stayed with Toyota as a freelancer hired to develop digital tools. “I loved discovering the manufacturing world through Toyota eyes,” he says. “And, when I joined Fortaco, I was very happy to see that we use a lot of Toyota thinking in our production.”
Kożuch works in Operations Development. He’s based in Wrocław, though the OD team travels all over to Fortaco business sites, working closely with the people they build solutions for. He considers it one of OD’s missions to free people from boring or unnecessary tasks. “When OD began,” he says, “we were mainly focused on the production environment. But now we’ve branched out to focus on quality, finance, and even HR.” Wherever there’s a job to be made more efficient, Kożuch is interested.
For HR, the OD team has developed a succession planning application. It allows local and global HR leaders to assess the criticality of positions, and then create a succession plan. “The app lets us track competences and make sure the ones needed for a position are developed,” Kożuch says. “If HR thinks the position of Application Development Specialist is critical, for example, then we’d need to make sure we’ve developed power apps and power automate skills in a potential successor. The app helps us create a plan and assign training. It’s a great tool to help the company be ready for change.”
In his spare time, Kożuch is attracted to things that at first appear intimidating—like adrenaline sports. “When you have confirmation that what you’re doing is safe, then everything else is just in our heads and we can confront our fears. That’s what keeps me coming back.” He recently climbed 222 meters to the top of a decommissioned chimney in Głogów, where he leapt into thin air. “It was six seconds of free falling.”
He finds parallels on the factory floor. “It’s all in how you look at things. Some look at a goal and see obstacles. But in OD we’d never say that something is impossible.” In fact, everything is possible is our unofficial motto, but Kożuch wants to keep that quiet. “If we advertise it too loudly, it will create more work than we can ever do!”
A Robot’s Grind
Fortaco Kurikka’s grinding robot keeps people happy: it lets welders weld, keeps costs under control, and ensures uniform quality.
There’s a reason it’s called “grinding.” Because it’s awful work. For welders, grinding is dirty, noisy, can cause upper limb injury, eye injuries, not to even mention the hazards associated with the tens of kilos of steel dust it generates. And it’s a lot of work: there are close to 200 seams in each of the roughly 3,000 Fortaco cabins produced in Kurikka each year for top OEMs in mining, forestry, defense, and the material handling industries.
But you can’t get around grinding. Grinding removes welding sparkle, oxide, and scratches. Cabin surfaces must be protected against corrosion, with the surface sealed flat for painting. A robot can reduce the takt time of the welding line by 30-40 percent, meaning significant gains in efficiency and capacity.
Tech talk for engineers
It’s not every robot that can give you those results. Fortaco’s grinding robot station is from Flexmill and uses MillControl- and Tool Time Manager software. The robot itself is an ABB Irb 6700-150/3.20 series.
RFID tags are used to enable the robot to recognize cabin models, essential for highly-complex manufacturing operations like Fortaco’s, where customers require much customization. When operating, the robot can choose from up to 10 tools needed to do the job, and it operates unmanned, holding three cabins on the line. For cabins not welded on the line, there is a side-feeding feature to enable their grinding. At the end of the line is a two-axis manual control manipulator for use in inspection, with the outfeed done by forklift.
But beyond the tech, it’s important to note that the robot’s benefits extend to the HR department. “The grinding robot speeds up some processes and frees workers' hands for other tasks. This, in turn, reduces the need for recruitment in this sector and makes work easier for us in the HR department,” says Sonja Koskela, People & HR and Employer Branding Specialist at Fortaco.
So why doesn’t everyone have one?
If a robot can offer such impressive results, even in a fairly customized production environment, why doesn’t every manufacturer have one? Well, because they’re expensive.
Ossi Antila, formerly Team Leader for Product Development, and now Chief Engineer for Product Development, concedes the robot required major investment, but was simply the next step in production development. “For us, with the quality requirements of world-class cabins, this robot was the next logical investment after a takt-based welding line.”
Robots of this caliber are “quite rare in the business,” says Tomi Metsä-Ketelä, Sales Manager for Kurikka. “But they’re also a requirement to for us to both continue to grow and to maintain the consistency and quality that our customers expect.”
I christen thee, Janne’
“If this robot makes such a significant contribution,” a visiting journalist asks, “does it have a name?”
A roomful of engineers and technical experts are at a loss for an answer, but rally driver Ari Vatanen, a Fortaco ambassador present to examine the robot, takes matters into his own hands. “I christen thee, Janne,” he says. “And I’m happy to be your godfather.”
But Janne pays no attention. He continues to grind.