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 3^rd, 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.”