Revving up
When the owner of this Swedish graphite brush manufacturer expressed his wish to retire, new leadership emerged to take it forward, as Alan Swaby learns.
Few things in the modern world function without electric motors in some part of the process. By the same token, electric motors are nothing without the tiny bits of graphite known as carbon brushes. Of course there are standard motors where brushes are sold in their millions, but concentrate on medium to large machines, as does the Swedish firm Karma Gerken Nordiska from Vällingby on the outskirts of Stockholm, and the business assumes a truly niche perspective.
ÔÇ£Our customers are at the heavy end of the spectrum,ÔÇØ explains managing director Mick Ayres. ÔÇ£We work with power stations, steel mills and the like. The number of these machines is counted in tens or hundreds only. Sometimes we can be supplying just a couple of brushes, although occasionally we do get larger volumes, say for locomotives that have hundreds of similar motors on the rolling stock.ÔÇØ
Carbon graphite, as used in brushes, is a surprisingly difficult material to make considering that itÔÇÖs made from common or garden ingredients such as coke, pitch and petroleum. In the whole world there are only a handful of companies that have the formula for its production, yet between them they make about 1000 different variations through the addition of varying quantities of copper or silver which enhance its conductivity.┬á
GraphiteÔÇÖs job is to pass electricity to the rotor, and it is a good conductor. Although there are plenty of other conductive materials, nothing has been found that is as hard wearing or creates less emissions of dust at the same price.
Karma buys graphite in 120x50x10cm blocks. Small chips are then cut to size, shaped and fitted with copper terminals. ItÔÇÖs fairly routine work but the workshopÔÇÖs productivity has benefited enormously from a little bit of re-organization.
Although Karma is totally focused on Nordic markets, Ayres is actually British. He joined the business in 2005 when the then owner persuaded him to move to Sweden. ÔÇ£Eighteen months ago,ÔÇØ says Ayres, ÔÇ£Thomas Rapp felt that he had given as much as he could to the business and expressed an interest in wanting to retire so, together with two co-directors, we arranged a management buy-out.ÔÇØ
As with many long standing companies, the way the organization was run had developed rather haphazardly over the years. It was ripe for some care and attention. The major problem was that everyone dabbled in several areas, without any clear demarcation or lines of responsibility, with the inevitable duplication of effort in both administration and workshop.
Ayres and his team saw the opportunity to put in new regimes. They argued that sales engineers should spend their time out with clients and notget bogged down with order processing. A group of technical administrators was organized to handle every aspect of the order once it was brought in by the sales force. They know the products intimately, how they are made and which of the suppliers are best for the task. 
Although graphite brushes are the only products Karma makes, theyÔÇÖre not the only items it supplies. Over the years it has built up a successful business in supplying coils for motors. These can vary from 230V to 11,000V and be needed in number from 30 to 600 per motor. Ayres knows this business well as he worked as production director for the UK supplier to Karma before moving to Sweden.┬á
While just-in-time is not completely relevant to the type of industries it serves, just-too-late must be avoided. Some of the projects it works on are major items of machineryÔÇömotors, for example, that might be seven meters in diameter. Maintenance or refitting a machine like this could take weeks and is meticulously planned. Teams as large as 20 engineers often work on such jobs and it would be disastrous for them to sit around waiting for the parts Karma is supplying. As such, deadlines are cast in stone.
Ayres achieves this through a policy of complete openness. There is no building in of artificial buffers in case his supplier slips a little. Instead, everyone knows exactly what is expected of each other in terms of scheduling and deadlines. Nor does he have any qualms about putting client and supplier in contact. The benefit of this is that sometimes the impossible can be achieved.
ÔÇ£Recently a client had inadvertently damaged some coils we had supplied,ÔÇØ describes Ayres. ÔÇ£I got a call at 8pm Friday asking what could be done. I put the general manager of the coil manufacturer and the client together. A plane was hired to fly the coils to UK where they were worked on all weekend. By Monday morning they were back in Sweden and the job was still on schedule.ÔÇØ
Ayres believes that providing service such as this is the key to improved sales. Karma has decided not to chase orders outside the Nordic area where the company is already well knownÔÇötrials and approvals take too long for short term results. Nor does it intend putting resources into widening its client base. Rather the plan is to find new products and services it can supply to existing customers.
ÔÇ£Our sales engineers are alert to any problems clients might be having,ÔÇØ says Ayres. ÔÇ£We then discuss internally if this is something within our capability and if so make a formal presentation to the customer. ItÔÇÖs all about removing headaches for them.ÔÇØ
This has already taken Karma in a new direction. After repairing six armatures as a test run, it received a second order worth over $100,000. Karma is benefiting all round from a fresh impetus of energy and enthusiasm and is presenting a more focused profile to the market at large, with clear improvements in sales and profitability as the reward.
