Inaugurated in Romania in 2015, as the first overseas production plant of Martur Fompak International, Martur Automotive Seating and Interiors Romania is now in a full expansion mode. 2020, amongst uncertainty and a health crisis, brought also new business opportunities and new projects. As such, the manufacturer continues its growing path and moves forward with its investment plans.
Martur has been constantly increasing its production activities in Romania, from the 8.000 sqm in production area in January 2015 to 30.000 sqm in January 2020 and 7 facilities. The headcount also grew from a little over 200 employees at the beginning of 2015 to 1.000 employees today, as new projects have entered into serial production at the plant in Romania. Now the company is investing in further expanding its production area with 40.000 sqm and 5 new constructions by 2023.
Talking about 2020 and comparing it to a car, Erhan Içlek, Seat Production Director for Martur Automotive Seating and Interiors Romania says “it should be a fast adaptable car, sturdy, reliable, versatile and ergonomic, in order to respond to all changes and challenges of 2020. In 2021, just a facelift is needed of the model from 2020, as 2020 is the perfect model and just maybe more easily accessible.”
The volatility of the market, the biggest challenge for the industry
2020 was a year of transition, as Erhan Içlek calls it, that changed how people worked and forced automotive manufacturers, from OEM to tier suppliers, to adapt the business from one week to another due to the lack of visibility. “When the pandemic started in Romania it was very difficult for us, as we had to stop the operations in the plant in two days and send 800 employees in technical unemployment, without knowing for how long. After just a few weeks, we were already making and preparing plans for people to return, this time in a different working environment. We wanted our employees to feel safe at work, and we managed to restart the activity after 6 weeks after the manufacturing operations had stopped. We adapted fast to the new working environment, prevention measures and business constraints, and slowly things started to come back somehow to normal working ways,” he recounts. The second half of 2020 brought in more projects, as such the expectations for 2021 were looking very good at the beginning of the year for Martur Seating and Interiors, with high volumes and an increased interest from different car makers to increase their volumes and diversity. Unfortunately, the expectations were not met, as the microchip crisis caused a havoc among OEM, supply chain shortages and disruptions crippling car production. “Volumes have decreased and uncertainty is even bigger compared to the previous year due to the lack of visibility on the available electronic components coming for China. This lack of available components is hugely impacting the automotive industry worldwide,” says Erhan Içlek. “In 2020 the effects of the pandemic were lower compared to this year. The biggest disruption we felt was this October, as we had to cut half of the production days due to the fact that our customer faced a lack of electronic components so he stopped the production,” he adds.
Erhan Içlek, Seat Production Director for Martur Automotive Seating and Interiors Romania “Currently the biggest challenge in the automotive industry is the volatility of the market. In terms of innovation, I believe that the automotive industry will face a revolution in the coming years related to raw materials. We will have to find ways to work more with sustainable materials.”
Looking ahead…
But the challenges have not impacted the company’s investment plans. “We are not willing to postpone our plans, but we will be more agile and try to manage the risks.” And being more agile means, besides using since many years of automation, robotics and investing a lot in new technologies, automatic logistic flows, also implementing detection and video analysis using Artificial Intelligence, and welcoming Industry 4.0 systems. Seeing as the automotive industry is switching to electric and the market trend is to have more than 50% worldwide of car usage by 2040 with electrical vehicles, Martur is also adapting its business. “We even started to work on some projects for electric cars. Our operations are not impacted at this stage, but we are making efforts to adapt fast and come up with solutions for the new market needs,” concludes Erhan Içlek.
Leadership mantra “Leaders don’t choose their followers. Followers choose leaders they can trust and respect”. This would be one of my leadership mantras and another one is “Lead by example”. As leaders, we set an ethical standard, and we become an example to the whole organization. I believe it made and still does a difference for the people I lead; each of us needs someone to inspire us, and I hope I am doing this.”
