Markku, Maintenance Specialist – Installations and service near the customer for 50 years

“I started to work at Raute straight after finishing the vocational school on June 3. Year was 1969. At the same with me time, many boys came to work for Raute. I started my career as a painting trainee after which I moved to the finishing filing cabinet to work on small parts. In a way, these tasks served as a traineeship for the assembly department. One year passed in the finishing filing cabinet, and then it was my turn to serve in the military. When returned to Raute, I started working in a lathe workshop at Raute’s Lahti factory, where I worked until starting among the service business.I transferred to the service team around 15 years ago. The alternative was that I could return to assembly if the new task and travel work would be too demanding for me. Well, here I am still after all these years.In practice, I do inspections at the customer sites and based on the visits also preventive maintenance. In addition, I sometimes work with capital projects, mostly among line installations. Mostly, there have been lathe installation gigs around the world. The work is very customer oriented. It is rewarding to see customer satisfaction. “

"I transferred to the service team around 15 years ago. The alternative was that I could return to assembly if the new task and travel work would be too demanding for me. Well, here I am still after all these years. In practice, I do inspections at the customer sites and based on the visits also preventive maintenance. In addition, I sometimes work with capital projects, mostly among line installations. Mostly, there have been lathe installation gigs around the world. The work is very customer oriented. It is rewarding to see customer satisfaction. “

Travelling around the world

Markku and colleagues at Lahti premises.

“Before joining the service team, I worked occasionally among projects. In 1987 I had my first site assignment at Orsev’s plywood mill where we delivered the whole mill.

Later travelling has increased a lot. By now I have travelled in so many countries that I have stopped counting. I can say that I have visited every country where there are plywood machines, such as New Zealand, Australia, China, Indonesia, Russia and Poland, only to mention some. My last trip abroad was to France.

My most memorable trip, in addition to Orsev, was certainly my first visit to Indonesia in 1993, starting on the Boxing Day. I had no earlier experience or knowledge about the country, and I was excited to see how it was to work in jungle.”

Work changes but something remains – People

“Fast changing technology has caused many changes to the work. In the old days, we played with faxes while being abroad. It was usually the big boss who had the only telephone and we had to change the calling line between the phone and fax. Communication was much slower and sensitive for distractions. Lines to the jungle were what they were which caused that sometimes the received faxes were unreadable. Also, the time difference caused much more difficulties because messages couldn’t be reached on time.

Today, communication is easier and quicker. It is also easier to get information. Reports can be done and read via mobile and on site you can check out drawings with your phone, for example.

Also, machines develop continuously, and modernizations bring many new versions requiring continuous learning and thus makings this work so interesting. You get to learn and develop yourself, too.

Even work and ways to work are changing all the time, one thing hasn’t change: People. This work requires knowledge of the human nature and every customer is different. The customer may be a family business where the entrepreneur him-/herself is closely involved in the business or the customer is a hired employee in some big corporate whose attitude can be very different. However, we always work for the customer. Without customers, there wouldn’t be any business.

This work also requires passion. Sometimes the work can be very dirty and hard, and situations change fast. Still it is all worth it when you solve the problem and the customer is thanking you. That is best feedback for your work.”

On Friday, August 30, 2019 Markku will start well deserved retirement days after 50-year-career at Raute. We want to thank Markku, the true customer service hero, for all these years. Enjoy!