Can we get to know you?
I was born in 1983 in Istanbul. After graduating in 2006 from Industrial Engineering department at Sabancı University, where I was studied with scholarship, I started my career in Arpek Arkan Aluminum High Pressure Die Casting Company, which supplies aluminum casting parts to automotive industry. After nearly 4 years in Arpek with great pleasure and invaluable achievements about production sector, where I worked for establishment of the ERP system, production planning, warehouse and logistics management, sales, and customer representation, I joined Telform Kelepçe and Yay Sanayi Ticaret A. S. as the representative of second generation. Currently, I am managing Sales and Marketing, Supply Chain, Production and Quality Departments of our company as Chief Operating Officer.

I have been representing Telform in Beysad as a member of Extended Executive Board since 2 terms. I spend most of my time outside of work with my 6.5-year-old son, Kaan.

When did your paths cross with your company?
My path with Telform first crossed organically through my father, Levent Küçükşener, the founder of our company. The foundation stages of Telform coincided with my junior high school years. I was familiar with the factory environment from an early age, as my father worked in the same sector professionally before. Before I actually started working at Telform in 2010, I closely witnessed the development and evolution of our company.

Could you give information about your company and its works?
Telform was established in 1996 in partnership with an Italian manufacturer and Levent Küçükşener,to produce hose clamps and springs for white goods and automotive industries. The company, which has grown rapidly thanks to its ability to produce quality products and customer demands, moved to its location in Tuzla in 1997. In the same year, with the participation of Sinan Dülger as a partner in the company, Telform became even stronger and accelerated its investments and growth. In 2001, ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management Certificate was obtained. In 2009, İsmet Dülger acquired the shares of foreign partners and Telform continued its activities rapidly with partnership of two families.

After my participation in Telform, we moved to our new factory building with an area of 7.000m² in Gebze Plastikçiler Organized Industrial Zone in January 2011. We had the opportunity to conduct our operations in a much more efficient and organized way in our new building, which was designed entirely in line with our own needs.

With our quality-oriented approach and our mission targeting customer satisfaction, we have proven the trust of our customers in our products by obtaining our ISO/TS 16949:2009 Automotive Management Systems Certificate (IATF 16949:2016) in our new location in the same year. In 2012, we entered a new sector by adding pipe clamps to our product range.

In 2016, Melis Dülger Yılmaz joined us as another second-generation representative. With her experience in finance sector and her identity as a financial auditor, she brought new achievements to our company in terms of looking to production activities from a financial perspective, After Mrs. Yılmaz joined us, we accelerated our efforts on transform a corporate company. We reshaped our organizational structure, created the Executive Board function, and professionalized our Board of Directors.

Until our 25th anniversary in 2021, we continued to increase our production capacity, add new products to our range and continuously improve our quality system with the technological investments we made, while delivering our products to more than 130 customer locations in 30 countries.

Right after we proudly celebrated our 25th anniversary of our establishment, there was another development that made us proud. We learned that our company, which was established with the vision of being one of the most preferred companies in Europe in the hose clamp and spring sector, is not only known by our very valuable customers, but also took attention of Lesjöfors AB, one of the largest spring manufacturers in Europe, with our successes.

As a result of a very intense Due Diligence process and negotiations that lasted for nearly one year, Telform joined Lesjöfors Group after the agreement signed in October 2022. After this development, for the last 5 months, we continue our regular business and manage our integration process to the group.

Could you give us some information about the new management and formation structure of Lesjöfors company and Telform?
Lesjöfors is one of the largest and oldest manufacturers of springs and pressing parts in Europe. The company, which is affiliated to the Swedish-based Beijer Alma AB group, continues its production and sales activities in 21 countries in Europe, Asia, and North America.

Lesjöfors was founded in 1675 as one of the oldest companies in Scandinavian geography and entered the industrial sector in 1852 with spring production. After the bankruptcy process in 1985, Beijer Alma company, which was traded on the Stockholm Stock Exchange in 1989, bought the shares of Lesjöfors.

Telform is the first investment of the company in Turkey, which has approximately 1,900 employees around the world.

The group continues to grow with new acquisitions and with its decentralized management approach and “Global Heart. Local Mind” motto, it has adopted the principle of strengthening local companies with the momentum of the group without changing the organizational structures of the group companies.

Therefore, after Lesjöfors' acquisition of Telform, we continue our current duties without any change in our organization. Only our shareholders, who have already transferred their operational duties to the second generation, also resigned from the Board of Directors after the share transfer.

Could you give information about the organizational structure of your company?
As Chief Operating Officer of Telform, I lead Sales and Marketing, Supply Chain, Production and Quality Departments that report to me. Mrs. Yılmaz manages Accounting & Finance and Human Resources & Administrative Affairs Departments as Chief Financial Officer.

We are 140 people in total with our competent and devoted department managers who are well-equipped in their areas of responsibility, our teams experienced in springs and clamps that we have been working with together for many years, and our expanding team with new employees who have joined us recently and with whom we would like to achieve new successes for many more years together.

In Lesjöfors Group, Mrs. Yılmaz and me, together we are the Managing Directors of Telform, and reporting to Lars Blidberg, Vice President Business Group Central Europe. Apart from this, we are in constant contact with different managers at our headquarters in Sweden for all processes that are within our area of responsibility.

Which sectors do you serve?
Today, as Telform, we produce products for the world's leading manufacturers mainly in white Goods and automotive, construction, electrical and electronics sectors,

Can you talk about your export rates and which country you export to the most?
Our export rate in 2022 was 42%. In both White Goods and Automotive sectors, we export the most to Europe, and in Europe mostly to Germany. Germany is followed by Spain and Italy. We are planning this year the SOP of a new project for which we have been working very hard for a long time. After this, UK will rise to the top of our exports. In the construction sector, we are exporting 100% of our products.

What are the features that set you apart from your competitors?
Since our establishment, we have been working with big producers such as Arçelik, BSH and Vestel. We deliver our products to all factories of Arçelik and we are globally approved supplier of BSH company. Working with the main producers brings a sense of responsibility and a quality-oriented working principle. The customer with high expectations always pushes you to be better and improve yourself continuously.

In addition, serving different sectors beside White Goods, provides knowledge, experience and technical infrastructure in different disciplines. Especially the IATF16949 certificate, which we have had for 12 years, got us used to working with high quality standards earlier than our competitors. We manage our processes with this standard for all sectors we serve in our company.

Apart from all these, we offer a wide range of products to our customers with the production of clamps, various springs and pressing parts. Thus, our customers meet more than one request in a single location.

We have gained these features over the years since our establishment. Now, while being a part of a global group with big experience and knowledge of our industry, we position ourselves in a very different place than our competitors. In the press release announcing acquisition of Telform, Ola Tengroth, Chairman of the Board of Lesjöfors AB, said, “Lesjöfors has followed Telform over a period of time and we are impressed by the company’s operations and culture, which we are convinced will fit well within Lesjöfors’ Group.” He added that they are looking forward to working together to continue to develop and grow us.

We are planning to continue our activities by strengthening our Lesjöfors group companies' experience and production capabilities, both by offering our own products to their markets and by offering a wider range to our customers with their products, and to further develop the Telform brand.

Can we get information about your new investment and R&D efforts?
For many years, our starting point when deciding on investments was the need to increase capacity to meet increasing customer demands. In recent years, we have focused on investments in automation that will improve our technology and increase our efficiency. In this direction, since 2015, we have produced 3 machines, the design of which belongs to our R&D team. While we continue to plan our investments that will make our processes more efficient, we also turned to digitalization by making more technological applications in our quality measurement equipment and documentation systems. We have many more projects that we plan to do in this area. Since October, we have had the opportunity to visit two of our group companies in Slovakia and four in Sweden. The experiences we gained during these visits and the technical support we could access afterwards both shape our investment plans and open new horizons for us within the scope of our R&D studies. In these days, we continue our negotiations with Lesjöfors management in order to realize our planned investments in a short time and to plan new investments.

With the pandemic and the war process; How was the year 2022?
Although the Pandemic was a difficult period, which we encountered for the first time at the institutional and individual level, it was a positive period for Telform in terms of financial results. Our production volume has also increased due to the fact that we are mainly working in the white goods sector, where the consumer demands increased in direct proportion to the time spent at home and the newly developed product range to meet the high hygiene expectations of the consumers. Thanks to our fast planning and ability to take action, we did not experience a break in our supply chain, and we continued our production without interruption thanks to the devoted work of the whole team. However, 2022 has been a difficult year for us, when the impact of the pandemic began to go down, like all other players in the industry we were struggling in multiple adverse conditions, like the Russia-Ukraine war, the unceasing increase in raw material prices, the ongoing semi-conductor chip shortage and the global impact of inflation.

What are your projections and risk factors for 2023? Do you have any special preparations or precautions regarding the earthquake?
For 2023, we foresee a stable year in all sectors in which we work. We aim to increase our financial performance with our new projects and our efforts to reduce costs. However, with the decreasing freight prices, which had increased during the pandemic process, we see those manufacturers in China, which is also the world's largest steel producer, are starting to regain their competitiveness in international export markets. In addition to competing with Chinese manufacturers, we will continue to struggle with the energy crisis, exchange rate risk and high inflation in 2023.

On February 6, we experienced two major earthquakes that destroyed 10 cities and caused the most loss of life in the history of the Republic of Turkey, according to current official records. The pain and impact of the disaster is enormous. Coming out of this grief will not be easy. As with all difficulties in life, we must not forget and learn from lessons. First of all, I think it is essential to heal the wounds in the region, to meet the urgent needs, while keeping children and education at the forefront. In our country, which is located on two major fault lines, a total mobilization needs to be started in order to learn to live with earthquakes and to take measures in this direction. We also take the necessary measures on our behalf in our company by keeping our Emergency Plans constantly up-to-date and working on our risk-based scenarios.

What are your views on BEYSAD and what are your expectations from BEYSAD?
I believe that joint projects have a great contribution to the development of companies within the same sector, but ultimately the entire industry. Thanks to the activities that bring together the representatives of the main industry and companies that supply products to the main industry like us, the bulletins that catch the agenda and keep the members informed constantly, and the BEYSAD magazine, we can be informed about the developments concerning our sector. In addition, I think that BEYSAD is a professionally managed sectoral association, with the Strategy Document and Industry 4.0 Competence Center, being in constant communication and interaction with other associations, and I wish the continuation of the success of our association, which we have been a member of since our establishment.