We are with Gökhan Lale, General Manager or 3 E Industrial Engineering. We are making an efficient conversation with him about the agenda of the sector.

Welcome, Mr. Gökhan. First of all, can you give information about yourself and your company?

• We provide services in the fields of heat treatment and industrial automation with our software and agencies. Established in 2005, our company now serves with a team consisting of 11 people at our headquarters located in TUBITAK Technocity. We have realized hundreds of project in more than 30 countries. Our main activity area is heat treatment. We meet demands of the sector with products such as sector-specific control systems, ERP software we develop and industrial furnaces we import from the abroad.

How did you meet MISAD which is an important organization of the sector and what kind of a relationship did you establish with the foundation?

• MISAD was established by the merge of Turkish heat treaters. Now, it has about 70 members. Some of them are international members. The aim here is to bring heat treaters together and develop solutions for common problems. In addition, to contribute to development of us and out members by obtaining information about some technologies with domestic and international technical trips organized.

You said trips. We heard of a Germany trip, and you have recently visited China. We wonder about your opinions.

• We frequently visit Europe. Existence of fairs and technical trips, and closeness of Europe are the biggest factors directing us to these geography. However, we have never been in the Far East region. Actually, Far East can be called as a wild card. We decided to visit China this year. With invitation and sponsorship of Powermax which one of the members of our foundation, we traveled to China with a team consisting of 29 people. We organized technical, and cultural trips in our journey which lasted for 9 days.

There is a popular wisdom. This is that there are more developed opportunities than our country for especially technical areas.China stands out as a country which usually proves this wisdom. You went and saw. Rather than a comparison, what was your impression about what to do or not to do as country and sector?

• China can be called as a giant of which economy is growing gradually. For example, to speak with numbers; while number of commercial heat treaters is 350 – 400, number of commercial heat treaters is 18.000 there. With companies having inhouse, namely heat treatment facilities within their companies, this number reaches about 50.000. While our capacity of annual automotive production is around 1 million, this number in China is 30 millions roughly. They produce express trains, nuclear power plants, ship and planes; they produce what develops advanced technology.

“CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF, CHINA IS NOT A CHEAP COUNTRY.”

• It is undoubted that production numbers I have mentioned about have an impact on heat treatment sector. There is a general rule that China is cheap. Prices from minimum wage to electricity and natural gas are far above Turkey. I think their biggest advantages are that they make multi-unit and high-volume productions. As a matter of course, as volume increases, costs reduce.

Then, we should ask the question like, How can you draw a conclusion by comparing your expectations before going and what you see there?

• As I said, we used to think that we will find reasonable and low-quality products; and even there are some estimations about quality of hotels. I have been in China earlier, I knew these thoughts will be disconfirmed, but expectations of many people thought like this. We saw these opinions changed after they witnessed expensive shopping and life. China has a lot products with various qualities. It depends on what you demand. If you want to buy cheap products with low costs, there are facilities doing so. However, there are also facilities which produce in high amounts and qualities.

“PRODUCTION IS FAR BEYOND EUROPE.”

• For example, Feng Dong company sponsored us. Powermax is one of the subcompanies of Feng Dong. Feng Dong is a Japanese company and has approximately 2.4 billion dollars of budget. They can produce over 250 furnaces we call as cabin atmosphere furnace annually. This number represents their production capacity. This number is around 40 in companies of Europe which can be called as “very big scale”. We are talking about a model here. Domestic market is so big that increasing by this numbers is inevitable to produce furnace for 50.000 facilities. Moreover, they informed us that a facility consisting of 50 furnaces will be opened in the next year. They invited us to fairs held biyearly. Due to size of their domestic markets, they do not need to go out of that region.

“HOTELS ARE LUXURIOUS.”

• Even if some of our friends had food problems, we enjoyed very tasteful meals generally. Hotels were luxurious generally and it drew our attention. We visited furnace factories. We visited Heat Treatment facilities. They have advanced in terms of production quality and technology. I believe thoughts of everyone in this matter have changed positively.

In line with all of your impressions, is it possible to mention about a model or method to be adapted from China to Turkey?

• Well, production in China multiple-volume. Pie is big, everyone holds adequate business in their hands. Since the pie is not that big, it is not possible for us to make production as planned as them. They conduct more consistent and long-term works. From this point of view, there is no direct application, but at least we saw that China has a production quality which is far beyond Europe, there is a price advantage, but not as low as you think. We will see if we can apply information we obtained there about new technologies.

Considering scientific methods and materials used in Turkish heat treatment sector, did you encounter some different methods or materials as result-oriented? For example, any different usage of gas or oil?

• When you approach to heat treatment technically, it does no vary depending on different continentals. Your business volume can change, but customers are global and processes are the same. What is important here is technology of equipment you use for this heat treatment. and how efficiently these technologies are used. When it comes to costs and processes, we saw that there are more logical applications compared to Europe. In this sense, our visit to China was so beneficial for Turkish Heat Treatment Sector.

Can you strategies be changed after this trip?

• Of course, we will take steps to increase efficiency of heat treatment facilities, reduce costs and move beyond in terms of equipment and production methods by using similar technologies here.

You made a visit on the last day of your trip. Let’s conclude our conversation by mentioning about this.

• We came together with our Shangai Consul and Sabri Tunç Algılı who is our Commercial Attache at lunch on the last day of our trip. We exchanged our knowledge and opinions. We came up a sentence and idea:“We know China in line with working strategies of Turkish importers. If the priority is to produce low-quality and cheap products, we consider China as such since we ordered such products from China. However, China is one of the leading economies which produces at the highest quality. China has production facilities of all automobile brands of the world.