Interview with Mehmet Asaf Satılmış, Owner of Dizayn Mühendislik

We had an enjoyable conversation with Mehmet Asaf Satılmış, owner of Dizayn Mühendislik, about his professional background, the company's development process and the products they have provided to the sector.

Mr. Mehmet Asaf Satılmış, could you briefly tell our readers about yourself, your education and your professional background in the sector?

This question made me realize how quickly the years have passed. It's been quite a journey, so I must admit it's a difficult question to answer. I was born in Izmir-Seferihisar. I graduated from METU's Department of Chemical Engineering in 1984. I started my professional career that same year. I have just completed 32 years in the profession. I worked at Tüpraş, Kordsa and Marshall respectively, at all authorized levels professionally. After completing my professional mission, I took a step into the real engineering field that was my main goal and which I knew was lacking in our country, founding Dizayn Mühendislik 14 years ago with the knowledge I had accumulated. We continue this business as a family company. I am married with two children.

Could you outline the company's development process since its establishment? How long has your company been providing services?

Dizayn Mühendislik was established in January 2003 and made an important entry into the developing Turkish market. From the day we were founded, we have worked with a customer-focused and solution partnership approach, adopting all standards and providing high-quality service. For this reason, we became a continuously developing company. Our fundamental goal is to design processes according to customer needs and meet customer expectations fully in a short time. Our continuously growing team, which has preserved its knowledge accumulation, demonstrates this by understanding our customers' expectations and rapidly producing solutions. In our early years, we started our work by providing design services. However, due to customer expectations and changing market conditions, we shifted towards turnkey projects. This was not enough; to improve quality and deliver in shorter timeframes according to customer expectations, we opened our own stainless steel manufacturing facility within Dilovası Organized Industrial Zone in 2014.

Could we get information about your company's field of activity, product range, production facilities, capacity and capacity utilization rates?

Starting with the paints and chemicals sector, we have expanded into all sectors containing systems within our scope. We now provide complete services to many different sectors such as paints, chemicals, food and mining. Of course, while doing this work, we work in partnership and with support from our solution partners around the world who have successfully completed global projects, alongside our own know-how. In addition to turnkey projects, we also supply machinery and equipment in our portfolio. Our main objective is that when customers come to us, they receive a complete solution without any headaches and maintain a trouble-free service with a single supplier over many years continuously. The foundation of our product range is turnkey projects. In our projects, we use equipment from our own portfolio. If we list these, they include all paint machinery, packaging robots, pneumatic transfer systems, rotary valves (air locks), big bag machines, bag opening machines, dispersers, mixers, pigging systems, pallet changers, dispensing machines (color paste dosing machines), loading hoppers and, in recent years, solvent recovery units as solvent costs have increased and environmental awareness has become more effective. We also supply many other systems and machinery not mentioned here. In 2014, to raise our quality to higher levels and increase our services with our engineering approach, we began manufacturing in our own facility within an area of 2,500 m2 with 1,500 m2 of enclosed space. All equipment we manufacture is calculated with computer support and in accordance with international standards. Where necessary, projects are submitted for approval to authorized inspection bodies and tests are conducted accordingly. For the past ten years, we have been operating at full capacity. When I say this, I am referring to our turnkey projects. Our manufacturing facility began serving us and we staffed accordingly. Since our goal is quality, we prioritize quality work over capacity.

Do you have projects you aim to implement in 2016?

Our work has been continuously increasing since the day we were founded and there has not been any downtime until now. Of course, projects run between 6 months and 2 years. For this reason, we sometimes have to turn down some work. Currently, all our teams are working intensively and we are continuing discussions for some projects. Since we are fully booked for 6-7 months of this year, we cannot accept projects except from established and anticipated customers. However, depending on our manufacturing situation, we take orders and allocate timeframes. Machinery sales are a separate category and these continue according to political and economic market conditions in our country. Due to the political situation, there is a contraction in investments; we hope this will be resolved shortly. Since a large portion of our projects are from foreign customers, economic conditions do not affect us. Risk management is an important criterion; therefore, we conduct our strategies according to domestic and external balances.

Finally, do you have a message you would like to convey to the sector?

All our companies should formulate strategies according to scientific, effective, quality and global service approaches so that our companies can provide quality products and services without being affected by economic fluctuations. Save