Interview with Tayfun Sığırtmaç, General Manager of Rösler Kromaş

Kromaş has been successfully operating in Turkey for over 25 years. As of 2014, following a strategic acquisition, it became a subsidiary of Rösler, one of the world's leading surface finishing companies, and took on the name Rösler Kromaş.

In our interview, Rösler Kromaş General Manager Tayfun Sığırtmaç provided detailed information about this process as well as the company's products and solutions.

Could you briefly tell our readers about yourself, your education and professional background? I was born in Bursa in 1974. I graduated from Bursa Anadolu High School in 1992. Subsequently, I completed my Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering at Uludağ University, followed by a Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering and a doctorate in the same field. I started my professional career in 1998 at Durmazlar Makine, where I held positions such as R&D Engineer and R&D Manager for approximately 10 years. Together with my team, I contributed to numerous successful projects, many of which were designed and manufactured for the first time in Turkey. I then moved into the automotive sector, serving as Technical Group Manager at Aktaş Holding for 4 years. Afterwards, I worked as R&D and Technology Group Director at Coşkunöz Holding for 3.5 years, where I had the opportunity to manage the R&D center of the Coşkunöz group, which has made significant contributions to both the machinery and automotive sectors in Turkey. Since October 2014, I have served as General Manager of Rösler Kromaş, Rösler's subsidiary in Turkey.

Could you provide information about Rösler Kromaş's founding process and the stages it has gone through to the present day? What is the current structure of Rösler Kromaş in terms of production facilities, machinery, number of employees, as well as turnover and production volume?

Kromaş has been successfully operating in Turkey's surface finishing sector for over 25 years. Following a strategic acquisition, it became a subsidiary of Rösler, one of the world's leading surface finishing companies, at the end of 2014 and took on the name Rösler Kromaş. Through its work, Kromaş made significant contributions to the development of Turkey's surface finishing sector and added value to its customers for many years through solutions it produced both domestically and internationally. Through this acquisition, we can say that the know-how and experience of Rösler, a company with a century of activity in this field, merged with the synergy of an active and dynamic Turkish company, resulting in positive value. We can see this in the successful growth trajectory demonstrated by Rösler Kromaş following the acquisition. At the end of 2014, we had 60 employees; today we have over 80 employees and continue this momentum of growth with an increase of up to 40 percent in the first three months of the year. Rösler Kromaş operates in three different but interrelated areas. Its internal structure is managed according to these divisions: Vibration Surface Finishing Group, Consumables Group, and Shot Blasting Group. The Vibration and Consumables Groups are functions that continued from the Kromaş period, while Shot Blasting is a division we established in early 2015 and have made significant progress in within 1.5 years. We have begun manufacturing certain shot blasting machine models (such as Suspension Type and Drum Type) in Turkey. Technology transfer work conducted with Germany, lasting over a year, was successfully completed, and we now produce these machines to German standards in Turkey while selling them both worldwide and conducting sales and marketing activities in our country.

What types of products does Rösler Kromaş provide to, and which sectors does it serve? Can you provide information about Rösler Kromaş's products, brands and services?

As Rösler Kromaş, we provide surface finishing products and solutions to many sectors in two different areas. These areas are vibration surface finishing and shot blasting technologies. In these two areas, Rösler Kromaş sometimes provides complementary solutions and sometimes addresses different topics, creating solutions for customers' surface finishing requirements. In the process generally called vibration surface finishing in Turkish but referred to internationally as "Mass Finishing," the surfaces of numerous different materials are processed according to technical specifications. These technical specifications consist mainly of degreasing, deburring, cleaning, edge radiusing and polishing operations. Generally, the surface roughness values of the part, referred to as Ra and Rz, are improved without causing dimensional changes in the part. Since surface requirements exist and differ in every sector, we serve many sectors. For example, in the machinery industry, deburring of gears, tooth smoothing operations; deburring, degreasing and cleaning operations after metal cutting manufacturing; surface cleaning on forged and cast parts; polishing of precious metals such as gold and silver in the jewelry and accessories sector; cleaning the surface before coating and preparing the surface for a brighter finish after coating on coated parts; polishing metal coins in mints and related industries; surface finishing and polishing processes in everyday products such as eyeglass frames, wristwatches or mobile phones. Consequently, we essentially meet every sector's post-production surface finishing needs. The basic working principle here relies on multiple parts, a movement created by specific engineering vibration that contacts these parts to bring the surface to the desired level, consumable materials that contact the part and provide surface roughness, and the machinery or automation systems that manage these.

Shot blasting generally involves surface cleaning and preparation for subsequent processing of heavier industrial parts.

Balls are shot at the part surface at a certain speed, and undesired mill scale, rust, dirt and other materials on the surface are removed through the impact effect. The material is also roughened before painting to improve paint adhesion, increasing surface area and the paint's grip effect. Shot blasting surface cleaning operations are used in many varied sectors such as foundries and forging facilities, steel constructions for sheet and profile surface cleaning, machinery manufacturing and the automotive sector. There is also a separate branch of shot blasting called Shot Peening, a ball hammer operation that, in addition to surface cleaning, strengthens the surface and is generally used in the aerospace industry and recently in the automotive sector to increase the strength of parts subject to fatigue. We have grouped all these solutions under two brand umbrellas. We offer our vibration surface finishing solutions under the Kromaş brand and both our vibration surface finishing and shot blasting solutions under the Rösler brand. In this regard, we offer Turkey's—and I would venture to say the world's—most extensive range of machinery and consumables products and solutions to the service of our customers.

What type of work does Rösler Kromaş conduct in the areas of innovation and R&D? Do you have projects developed within the scope of university-industry cooperation, and if so, what are they?

We have an R&D team of 6 people, and we plan to increase this number during this year. University-industry cooperation is a matter to which we attach importance both institutionally and personally. Over the past 1.5 years, we have undertaken some work in this area, though these remained at a more basic level. We devoted that time primarily to strengthening our structure and improving our existing projects. In the meantime, although we have developed Turkey's largest marble sector machine and a new treatment system, we did not have the opportunity to evaluate these under TUBITAK due to workload. In 2016, we have several TUBITAK project applications with preparation work already completed. We also intend to participate in university-industry cooperation support programs such as SANTEZ and 1505. As a technical team, protecting our innovations in surface finishing through Utility Models and patents is also on our agenda.

Could you tell us about your domestic and international sales activities? Which regions do you mainly focus on domestically and internationally, and what types of products do you sell?

We offer the product groups branded as Kromaş, which I mentioned, to both domestic and international markets. We have distributor networks in many countries, which we further strengthened in 2015. We continue to add new distributors to our organization this year. We offer Rösler-branded products only to the domestic market. Abroad, we have active sales and marketing activities in various markets, particularly in Europe. In these countries, we provide our products and services to our customers through distributors or direct sales.

Could you provide information about Rösler Kromaş's environmental policy and sustainability approach? What can you tell us about your work related to occupational health and safety?

Environment and sustainability are matters to which we must give importance both individually and institutionally today. We particularly manage our waste in a manner that does not harm the environment and follow processes compliant with relevant regulations. Additionally, we have both improved our existing treatment system and designed a new treatment system for the reuse of wastewater resulting from the products we produce and the processes we provide. While carrying out this work, we also use Germany's R&D centers for efficiency, quality and performance and reflect these in our products.

Could we learn your thoughts about Turkey's industrial paints, coatings and surface finishing sectors? In terms of these sectors, what do you think are Turkey's advantages and disadvantages?

Turkey's surface finishing sector continues to develop. The market size has not yet reached saturation. This is partly because many applications are still being carried out manually and with older methods. In other words, the sector needs more automatic surface finishing systems like those we produce in both existing markets, and there is a growing market in new application areas in line with increasing surface quality requirements. For example, some operations previously performed with polishing are now processed on vibration surface finishing machines. This is because labor is reduced and there is an increase in surface quality at a high and stable level. While the European market is somewhat saturated in this regard, the precision surface finishing market continues to grow there as well in many sectors such as advanced machine tools, medical devices and aerospace.

What criteria does Rösler Kromaş prioritize when formulating investment plans? Do you have investment plans for the coming periods, and if so, what are they?

When formulating our investment plans, we focus primarily on our growth targets, sectoral developments, the general state of the market and our strategies, and we make investment decisions accordingly. We have investment plans that we established for the next 5 years following the founding of Rösler Kromaş at the end of 2014. In line with this, we continue to invest in both physical investments and human resources. Over the past 1.5 years, we have grown by over 35 percent in terms of employee numbers. We have also reflected similar growth in our turnover. Our current facility is beginning to create certain constraints for further increasing our production capacity. We have a plan for a new factory investment. Last year, we laid the foundations for this investment and purchased factory land in Hadımköy. We anticipate the physical completion of the factory around 2018. Beyond this, we have also brought an important production capability and product group from Germany to Turkey. We have begun manufacturing certain shot blasting machines produced in Germany in Turkey and have taken our technology one step further in this respect.