Page 38: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (May 1999)

FINLAND FOCUS realigning itself to market demand was instituted in the fall of 1998, and by the end of 1999 will have seen a reduction of some 1,000 employees, the discontin- uation of all engine manufacturing at

Trollhattan, Sweden, and therefore the ending of Wartsila 25 production, and the closure of Cummins Wartsila sites at

Surgeres, France, and Ramsgate, Eng- land.

Most salient to the company's long- term well-being has been the institution of entirely new organizational structure in which operations are now generically oriented to marine, power and service business areas. The arrangements have entailed a thorough-going redistribution of responsibilities at senior management level, and mark a fundamental switch to a more customer-attuned structure, com- pared with the earlier approach geared

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Circle 274 on Reader Service Card to individual product companies. "Our restructuring, cost cutting and reorganization measures are aimed at increasing efficiency and responsiveness in order to restore our profitability in a volatile market environment," con- firmed Wartsila NSD president Ole

Johansson.

Among the changes, Mikael Maki- nen, Stefan Fant and Tage Blomberg have been appointed from within the organization to lead the respective marine, power plant and service busi- ness areas. Blomberg's reassignment from the marine front is salient to the

Wartsila NSD's bid to raise the volume of stable and profitable service business as one of its priority objectives. The aim is to offer customers operation and maintenance services throughout the life-cycle of the marine installation or landside power plant.

The company's financial performance in 1998 had been beset largely by prob- lems in its power plant business, com- pounded by the Asian crisis. A major advance in the aggregate power of seagoing machinery rolled-out of group factories had buoyed combined deliver- ies of marine and stationary diesel engines to 4,182 MW, although power plant deliveries actually dropped by 19 percent.

Its market share in the stationary power generation sector slid from 22 to 17 percent.

But earlier growth in demand from the passenger and cruise ship, containership and offshore sectors had a considerable impact on the surge in four-stroke engine deliveries to 2,512-MW, com- pared with 1,995-MW the year before, augmented by increased output from

GMT to 303-MW. Licensees of the

Sulzer two-stroke range rolled-out 2,748-MW, up 348-MW from 1997.

Wartsila NSD's market share of low- speed engines ordered over the course of 1998 rose to 31 percent, and its stake in the medium-speed field amounted to 28 percent.

While considerable renewal and development of the medium-speed port- folio, and the introduction of new high- speed models, points to a period of con- solidation in the four-stroke category,

Wartsila NSD is looking to strengthen the mid-range of the Sulzer RTA two- stroke, low-speed offering.

As a further indicator of long-term intent, R&D expenditure amounted to four percent of net sales.

A notable development was the phas- ing-in of the Wartsila 64 engine- equipped Wasa Pilot Power Plant at

Vaasa, Finland, as a platform for evalu- ating high-efficiency diesel combined cycle technology. — David Tinsley

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Circle 209 on Reader Service Card