I was filled with joy, when I learnt that our member Prometal became an R&D Center as many of our members did before and I wanted to share the news with you immediately. They were also very excited and sent me the previously-conducted interview below. We wanted to share it with you with a few small retouches. The questions answered by the R&D Director ÜmmetAyyıldız and the General Manager BurakAzman will, I think, guide you through your journey to become an R&D Center. We would like to thank them and wish them success in this endaveor.

* This section was answered by the R&D Director Mr. Ümmet Ayyıldız.

Prometal has been accepted as an R&D Center by the Ministry of Industry and Technology. Could you tell us your journey of becoming an R&D Center?
Prometal is a 100% domestic-capital company with a high potential that produces over 7.5 million products per month for various sectors especially the automotive and white goods sectors from many different locations of the world with its 20-years of experience and vast knowledge in the zamak and aluminum die-casting sector and adds value to our national economy by exporting 70% of its production. 

Considering the future projections of the company as well as the present customer expectations and global competition conditions, the goals of increasing the product quality, eliminating process losses and boosting productivity in all the processes involved drew us to a new awareness. We took the first step with a simple transformation that includes all of our processes, which revealed the need to further investigate new techniques in product and process development.

At this point, we asked to ourselves why we do not establish a research and development unit with our internal dynamics and that is how we transformed our simple team to an R&D team. A while after we took off R&D activities, we decided to gather these activities under the name of an R&D center and to apply to the respective ministries and to carry out the required infrastructure in a standardized and systematic fashion. This decision was indeed the herald of a new era in our company. After maturing all these processes, we successfully passed the audit conducted by the Ministry of Economy in December 2018 and were announced to be one of the 1000 R&D Centers.

What is the process after becoming an R&D Center?
After we became an R&D Center, we immediately focused on our R&D projects with our expanded organization with a stronger competence. During these operations, patent and copyright issues became topics to pay attention to. We started product applications with outputs with high added value and innovative process applications in all of our processes. We entered the process where proposals sped up and improvement was encouraged.

As the competence management of our organization became more and more important, some of our employees started to study for a master’s degree. We gave momentum to engaging TÜBİTAK projects and paying attention to the literature. Especially our present R&D team went on to fairs, seminars and technical research visits. Collaborations with universities took off.

Could you tell us about the contributions and advantages of becoming an R&D Center to Prometal?
With the R&D activities, our business began to gain new opportunities in a number of R&D projects started to enhance the growth and competitive power with government promotions.  Global supplier of world leader brands, Prometal can now proudly say YES to the “Do you have an R&D unit where we can design products together?” question of its customers and thus, has began to embark on common projects. Prometal has now gained bigger recognition.

Thanks to the transformations undertaken at Prometal and the contribution of all our employees, we are the preferred company in the leading brnqadsFesto, Autoliv, Ficosa, and Samsung in their new projects; we have earned sustainable gains and we are maintaining this sustainability through our operations. 

*The questions below were answered by the General Manager Burak Azman.

We know that Prometal has new investments and new goals ahead besides becoming an R&D Center; could you tell us about new developments in your company?
In line with the 5-year goals of our company, we started the year by adding new machines to produce using the multislide technology as our new investment. This particular technology gives output in zamak injection casting in more precise tolerances and with higher efficiency. We put our first machine into use in January 2019. We will engage 3 more multislide casting injection machines to be completed within 2019 and we have created capacity for new projects.

We have increased our capacity by 30% this year by adding another aluminum injection pressing machines to existing ones. One of our primary goals is growing in the aluminum injection area taking into consideration our new projects and received proposal evaluations. By 2020, we will enlarge this section of our factory with new investments and build Prometal aluminum casting factory in a new and different factory area.

How was 2018 for Prometal? Could you tell us about your expectations of 2019?
We carried out very successful projects in 2018. We successfully applied our one-year supplier development program in cooperation with the safety belts and airbags producer AUTOLIV and improved our plain production system and were certified by our customer. We gained a structure with 50% improved quality indications compared to the previous year, less waste and higher efficiency. Therefore, we got the advantage of completing the audits of new customers in VDA standards faster. Last but not least, we successfully passed the audit by Valeo France in 2018 and are now in their supplier portfolio.

Our expectation of 2019 is to make our improvements and investments known to more number of potential customers and to grow our turnover with corporate and global customers.

Would you like to add anything else? Our biggest advantage is…
Prometal’s capacity to carry out mold design and production inhouse since its establishment differentiates us from its competitors and moves us one step forward in the competition. As the company culture, we would like to be customer-focused, flexible and solution-oriented, improve our service quality besides producing and selling parts, and increase our customer satisfaction and loyalty. With the plain transformation and R&D Center projects that we started to this end, we aim to improve our processes and become a preferred supplier that works at the global scale especially in the zamak industry.