Small, efficient, courageous, and motivated teams are the key to flexibility and rapid development. This is especially true in cases where team members feel comfortable, can engage in open communication, and support each other regardless of circumstances (see The New York Times). We at TT Gaskets also have strong belief in these values.
Former Israeli president Shimon Peres once said that the best way to prepare for and predict the future is to invent it yourself. This has been an important guideline also for us. My grandfather and TT Gaskets’ founder Jussi Arpiainen wanted to contribute to the future of Finland’s independence by innovating gasket materials from techno-chemical substitutes and later continued his work by developing next generation metal gaskets. We had to pave the way for our future success by innovating brand new solutions for the needs of the Finnish Defense Forces.
My father Matti Arpiainen encouraged his team in a similar manner. He introduced water cutting and toolless gasket manufacturing to the Finnish market in the 1980s together with VTT and other operators. His goal was to speed up the manufacturing of prototypes and pre-sealing series while bringing a production-oriented approach to gasket and insulation product manufacturing.
The TT Gaskets’ strategy illustration reminds that we have two ears and only one mouth for a reason. We listen closely to our customers, influencers, and other industries. Our observations form a synthesis that helps flesh out an idea of the future.
We have a great understanding of our customers’ needs thanks to continuous listening and staying up-to-date on industrial trends. We support our customers’ operations by combining mechanical and simulative gasket design. This flexibility and the possibilities of data are at the core of our customers’ future needs – be it different procurement routes, service concepts of intelligent sealing solutions. These concepts can produce unprecedented value for our customers as they develop their processes towards a more sustainable and economic direction.
We have made investments towards developing our services and shaped them together with our customers. At the same time, we have invested and will continue to invest in robotizing our processes, finding new production methods, and monitoring the quality, safety, and efficiency of our manufacturing processes.
I have had the pleasure to participate in finding solutions for the future and witness the drive of our excellent development team. Sometimes there have been challenges in our development projects. Nevertheless, we have always emerged a bit wiser thanks to not having to be afraid of making mistakes. Respect and mutual trust are strong, and by working together they have only become more prominent.
I am sure that we will discover new forms of flexibility in the future. We can, for instance, share knowledge more seamlessly and give our customers access to our manufacturing chains and stock levels, enabling them to submit restocking requests for their own warehouses. This saves time and money, and we can focus on making our collaborations even deeper and more technical in nature.
We are expanding our abilities to support our customers with new annual maintenance and shutdown services that save time, resources and money while generating valuable data for coming projects. We can also support our customers’ maintenance and install crews’ continuous learning with our training solutions. These innovations will come in handy for our customers in the process and manufacturing industries as generational change and workforce internationalization become more prominent themes.
We have continued our considerable investments in our product development and testing laboratory as well as the expertise of our staff. We offer flexible testing and design support for sealing future machines and equipment and provide system data on the validity of gasket installations and life-cycle tracking.
It isn’t easy to foresee the future, but by collaborating and conversing with different parties it is possible to shine some light into tomorrow. This approach forms the basis of all our operations together with a belief for a better future and the courage to innovate the future ourselves.
A great big thank you to all our customers and partners for our encounters in recent weeks! It has been great to meet you in large numbers at our factory as well as in SMM Marine fair in Hamburg, InnoTrans in Berlin, and the Alihankinta Subcontracting Fair in Tampere. We are already looking forward to the Underleverantör Fair at Elmia, Sweden, as well as many meetings at our factory and our customers’ premises.
Wishing you all a lovely autumn and rewarding reading, make sure to stop by next year at the latest to learn more about our new and revolutionary manufacturing solutions!
Best wishes for the future,
Aleksi Arpiainen