DS Makina General Manager
Yıldıray Yanık
Can you briefly tell us about the foundation story of DS Makina and your activities?
DS Makina was established in 2011 and started its activities. A company founded on supporting cement plants with machinery and equipment. Afterwards, we decided to grow the volume and portfolio even more, and acquired different dealerships. There are Chinese, German and Danish companies that we represent now. Since the establishment of our company, the conditions have also led us to do different things. You may have trouble when you are constantly in a single sector. For this reason, we added DS Solar to our works over time. We also install solar power plants under this brand. (www. dssolar.net) In addition to cement and solar energy, we also have a manufacturing area. Regardless of the sector, mechanical productions are made and we offer solutions. When they ask us what we do, what we produce, we say “We produce solutions”. We can produce different solutions for everyone in mechanical infrastructure works. We have sales and production engineers in our staff who support us. We also have a separate production team. Our head office is located in Istanbul, but we are working all over the cement factories in Turkey. As a company policy, we are getting as much business as our volume and capacity. We’re not going over it. Our goal is to deliver the job we have in the highest quality. We do not want to exceed our capacity and get away from our quality.
Can you tell us about your company’s service and product portfolio? What are your featured products or product groups? Can you tell us in detail about your works especially related to cement industry?
Thanks to our previous sectoral experience, we have a knowledge of all equipment in the cement industry such as rotary kiln, cooling and mill. As DS Makina, we try to meet the machinery, equipment and spare parts needs of the cement industry as much as we can. We are distributor of China-based CNBM Smart and Luoyang Zhili in Turkey. We reflect the production power here to the sector. We can supply all machines from the smallest to the largest desired within the cement plants. This is a great advantage for us. We can offer service both as a whole machine and as spare part. In addition, we have taken the distributorship of German origin Agrichema in Turkey. We wanted to introduce a different brand to the sector by seeing that there is a need and a clearness here. We have filled the gap here in a short time with our work. I also think we’re doing important work in terms of introducing these Chinese companies in Turkey and establishing trust. The number of cement factories in Turkey has reached great figures. With it, many different needs of them emerge. In this sense, we are working hard to support them. As we sell with our strong companies, the trust of the sector increases with you.
How do you manage your R&D processes? What kind of work system do you have?
Recently, requests from the customer have been ready in terms of product and technical. We directly supply and deliver these products through our representatives. On the engineering side, we use their technical side. However, sometimes there are some projects about production. At this point, we intervene and support them in terms of project and production methods. We use the customer’s own technology in the projects. We only produce. We can say that we can act according to the requests.
Economic fluctuations in 2019 had a negative impact on the business life in our country. Can you evaluate 2019 in terms of both your industry and your company?
2019 was not a good year for the cement industry. It was for us too. Because spare parts and equipment are not needed when production capacities are contracted or stopped in factories. There have been no investments. However, we continued to sell our products to a small extent by our representatives. We have also done new jobs on the manufacturing side. We worked and produced new solutions. We spread the topics we know well to other sectors. In fact, we invested in improving ourselves.
What are the features that differentiate DS Makina from its competitors? Why should I choose you as a customer?
I think the reason they prefer us is because we act more sincerely. We don’t have very formal and clear lines. We don’t have a normative system. As a company owner, if I need to support my team in manufacturing or other issues, I will do it on my own. For this reason, this may be more sincere to our customers who prefer us. I think we are technically strong as well. For this reason, I can say that they prefer us. I entered the cement industry in 2004. We have always walked in the industry with our friendships. Our personal relationships with people have always been very good. This does not mean that we took our jobs with our friendship. Our technical competence and prices have been at the forefront in every business we take.
What kind of structure do you have for sales, marketing and after sales services?
In sales and marketing, we first consulted the people who are pioneers in this business. We did not appear to rival anyone. We said that there is a cake in the middle and we want to take a slice of this cake. We listened to our friends what kind of work we should do and how we should follow. In the formation of our structure, we introduced ourselves to everyone and tried to go to all factories. Demands started to come after recognition and our structure settled. We visit cement factories several times a year. Because there may be situations where we need to see and detect on site. We make those determinations one by one in place. If we summarize our structure; we visit our customers, we keep our one-to-one relationships well, we update the sales and marketing side and we try to answer every question as technical support. From time to time, we also get support from the groups we represent.
What kind of a path do you follow after sales?
If there is a problem with spare parts after sales, we provide technical support. But since we usually provide spare parts, there is no demand after sales. However, if there is a problem with the product, we have a replacement. We usually sell equipment that works very smoothly. Sometimes we only need spare parts, we do what is necessary.
We will finish the first quarter of 2020 in a very short time. What are your expectations from 2020?
We think we achieved our target in 2019. I predict that 2020 will be a little more difficult. But we will try to produce more, sell at a more affordable price and sell more. In fact, we will produce more and earn the same money. The changing agenda and developing events affected us in 2020 and will continue to affect.
Do you have anything to add?
There is a shortage of qualified personnel in Turkey. This is the case in the cement industry as well in the other sectors… When this is the case, there is a lack of intermediate staff. For this reason, nobody can find the staff in the criteria he wants. I also have a vocational high school history. As long as the vocational high schools in Turkey do not receive the deserved value, intermediate staff deficit will grow steadily. As qualified personnel are not trained, there is no qualified job. If this gap closes, we, as a country, can be bigger together. We Can Find Solutions…