Last week start out with meeting our host families. The first part of the I week stayed with Martin and Jenny Jansson. They have three children, Ida who is 8 years old, Lydia who turn 6 years old while I was there, and Carl who is 1 year old. Martin works for Sandvik in the mining and construction as a global project manager and Jenny works as a Occupational therapist for children with disabilities. Martin and Jenny have both spent time in the USA. Martian will be at Caterpillar in Illinois the week we return home. Jenny worked as a Aupair for a couple in Minneapolis for a year in the 1990's and also return for a few months to complete some education requirements for her degree. It was great to discuss Sweden and USA with them.
The Jansson Family
On Monday I went with Martin to Sandvick and meet with my first host Conny Haraldsson. Conny is in charge of facilities maintenance. This is no small task when you have 600,000 square meters or 6,500,000 square feet under roof. The first tasks of the day was to get equipped with fire rated clothing. This is a requirement anytime you enter any to the facilities where hot metal is being worked on. So Conny took me to the central warehouse to get my official uniform. Sandvik doesn't allow camera's in most area's so I was not able to take many pictures.
The tour began my visiting the Coromant facility. This is where they make all of the cutting tools and holders. This was a beautiful facility and was very new because the old building was gutted by fire a few years ago. I was able to see the cutting tool demonstration/testing area and was able to take a few pictures in here. They also had a very nice display that showed the progression of the progression of the cutting tools from their beginnings.
Conny worked in the tube mill for many years so that was our next stop. Sandvik is one of three facilities in the world that make the tubes for the nuclear power industry. We then stopped by his office and had "fika" and discussed their idea's on facilities management and how the union in Sweden works. Next we toured the extrusion facility. They don't extrude aluminum they extrude steel as a preprocess for other processes like the tube mill.
Tubes made in the Tube Mill
We then meet up with Erik Törnkvist and had lunch. At lunch we discussed what Erik does at Sandvik. He is in charge of fire prevention for the company. An interesting note was, it is not required to have sprinkler heads in the plants here in Sweden, however if they would have been installed in the Coromant building the damage would have been far less. After lunch Erik and I tour the melt plant. Here they melt 75 tons of specialty steel at a time. This steel is then delivered to the continuous casting department or the ingot pour department. It was very interesting to see this large of foundry in process. Erik and I then walked uptown to the head quarters. Here they have a large forging press that you walk through on the way to the office. They also have a statute of the founder of Sandvik Göran Fredrik Göranssson.
Old forging Press built in 1800's
I attend my first Swedish Birthday party on Tuesday when Lydia turned 6. This was a great experience. One the morning of their birthday the family sings to the children to wake them up and the family gives them their presents. Then in the evening the rest of the family, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousin came over to celebrate. It was great to spend some time with the kids and hear them laugh and play.
Tuesday we spent the day as a group with a Morning Rotary meeting, touring Gevalia coffee factory, a noon Rotary meeting and tour Leaf candy factory. More on this day in another blog.
Wednesday was another day at Sandvik. I spent the day in the rolling mill with Peter Andersson and his team. I was able to attend their production meeting and maintenance meeting. It was very interesting to hear them discuss the daily issue they are working on. I also spent time with this maintainance team leaders Mats Jonsson and Bjorn Bostrom discussing their preventive maintenance, troubleshooting and training programs. They also spent a great deal of the day giving me a tour of the facility. This tour takes awhile when the plant is on multiple levels and is about 1/3 mile long.
Wednesday evening we attended a concert at the Gävle Concert Hall. This was a great building and a nice evening. After the performance we attended a party in the artist foyer. Thanks to Roland Lindgren for putting this together and having us as guests. It was very enjoyable evening.
Thursday it was back to Sandvik for another 1/2 day. By this time I knew the security guards and think I could have found my way just about anywhere. I spent the morning in the forging plant. There I spent the morning with Hans Jernberg and attended the production meeting, learned about the process and team aspect of the department. At 11:00 I meet up with Conny, turned in my official Sandvik uniform and hopped on the 11:30 bus to Gävle. Going from Sandvik to Gävle is about the same distance as Fond du Lac to Oshkosh. This bus runs every 30 minutes each way. Much different than in the US. I arrived in Gävle in time to walk a few blocks to the Noon rotary meeting where we were presenting that day.
In the afternoon I spent some time with the Rotary president Ingela Broström discussing historic preservation in Sweden. So very interest discussions on preservation verses usage/operation. She also set up for us to tour the castle in Gävle on Friday. The castle is home the the current county Governor, which happens to be Tiger Woods mother-in-law.
More on Friday and Saturday events to come in a future blog.
Mike
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