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![]() Headquarters of SKF in Gothenburg, Sweden (2020) | |
Company type | Publicly traded Aktiebolag |
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Nasdaq Stockholm: SKF B | |
ISIN | |
Industry | Manufacturing |
Founded | 1907 |
Founders |
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Headquarters | Gothenburg, Sweden |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Hans Stråberg (Chairman) Rickard Gustafson (President & CEO) |
Products |
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Revenue | ![]() |
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Total assets | ![]() |
Total equity | ![]() |
Owner | FAM AB (14%; 29.3% votes) [1] : 47 |
Number of employees | 42,602 (end 2021) [1] |
Subsidiaries |
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Website | skf |
AB SKF (Swedish : Svenska Kullagerfabriken, 'Swedish Ball Bearing Factory') is a Swedish bearing and seal manufacturing company founded in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1907. The company manufactures and supplies bearings, seals, lubrication and lubrication systems, maintenance products, mechatronics products, power transmission products, condition monitoring systems and related services globally. [2]
SKF is the world's largest bearing manufacturer [3] and employs 44,000 people in 108 manufacturing units. It has the largest industrial distributor network in the industry, with 17,000 distributor locations encompassing 130 countries. [1] : 4 SKF is one of the largest companies in Sweden and among the largest public companies in the world. [4]
This section needs additional citations for verification .(April 2024) |
The development of SKF is a significant part of the Swedish and global machine industry development. AB SKF was established in Gothenburg in 1907 with the initial capital and startup project for ball bearing manufacturing of Gamlestadens Fabriker AB, under the guidance of co-owners and members of the board Axel Carlander and Knut Johansson Mark, following the invention of the spherical ball bearing by engineer Sven Gustaf Wingquist. He was an operations engineer in Gamlestadens Fabriker AB and was then appointed CEO and technical manager in SKF. Industrialist Axel Carlander was the first chairman of the board of SKF from 1907 to 1937 during which time he implemented successful industrial and corporate managerial strategies for the startup and growth of SKF and the establishment of its factories outside Sweden.
Historically, the machine industry development and industrial production of innovative technical models depend on both engineering and industrial leaders, on the base of their educational, research and professional experience. In this context, the startup and growth of SKF has become possible due to the engineering experience and inventions of Sven Wingquist and the industrial managerial experience and strategies of Axel Carlander.
Sven Wingqvist, at the time a thirty-year-old plant engineer responsible for repairs and maintenance at Gamlestadens Fabriker, was dissatisfied with the performance of the ball bearings then in use. In spring 1907, Wingquist presented a breakthrough: a double row self-aligning ball bearing with a spherical raceway in the outer ring, shared by both rows of balls. This allowed the inner ring to align freely in relation to the outer ring, with no negative impact on the function of the bearing. The new bearing solved the problem associated with misalignment of the shafts and thus did away with the frequent production stops. Self-alignment was particularly useful in the less-than-perfect machinery of the times and in buildings with subsidence problems, which was the case at Gamlestadens Fabriker, since much of the land on which Gothenburg has been built is clay.[ citation needed ]
On 16 February 1907, Wingqvist applied for Swedish patent No. 25406, a multi-row self-aligning radial ball bearing. The Patent was granted on 6 June in Sweden coinciding with patents in 10 other countries. The new ball bearing was successful from the outset. Three years after SKF was founded, the company had 325 employees and a subsidiary in the United Kingdom. Manufacturing operations were later established in multiple countries.
In 1906, Sven Wingquist patented the self-aligning ball bearing, and in 1907, the multi-row self-regulating radial ball bearing (spherical ball bearing). He graduated Örebro Technical Elementary School in 1894, whereafter he started working as an engineer in Swedish textile factories, respectively Jonsereds Fabriker AB from 1896 to 1899 and Gamlestadens Fabriker AD from 1899 onwards. As an operations engineer responsible for repairs and maintenance at Gamlestadens Fabriker AD he sought opportunities to improve the efficiency and endurance of the ball bearings used at the time. Due to that, he was interested in a comparative study from 1902 about ball and plain bearings by professor Richard Stribeck of the Institute of Technology in Dresden, Germany. Sven Wingquist invented the first design of combined self-aligning spherical ball bearing. It was a revolutionary upgrade of the first ball bearing design which was invented and patented by British iron-maker Philip Vaughan in 1794 and the first design of self-aligning spherical plain bearing which was invented by Scottish engineer James Nasmyth around 1840. The historical development of the bearing’s design is a result of revolutionary inventions and upgrades for improvement of their efficiency and endurance as well as broadening the scope of their application to a variety of machine industry sectors.
In 1917–1919 Arvid Palmgren, who started working as a research engineer in SKF, invented and patented the first design of the double-row self-aligning roller bearing (spherical roller bearing), the production of which continues to this day. He graduated in civil engineering at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm in 1916 and became a Doctor of Technology in 1930 with dissertation thesis on the capacity of ball bearings.
The startup and growth of SKF depends not only on technical inventions but also on industrial and corporate management strategies and power. Axel Carlander was a co-founder of SKF as a co-owner and member of the board of Gamlestadens Fabriker AB, which corporate policy provided conditions for experimenting with the new bearing models and the startup of SKF, and also he was the first chairman of the board of SKF who applied successful managerial strategies to the company startup and its development during the first 30 years. He graduated from the Gothenburg Trade Institute in 1886 and he is second generation industrialist with education and significant managerial experience in the field of economics, trade and industry. He developed his industrial and corporate strategies as co-founder and chairmen of the board of leading companies in Gothenburg, as co-owner and board member of the trade and textile company Johansson & Carlander and Gamlestadens Fabriker AB; co-founder and first chairmen of the board of SKF (1907– ); co-founder and first chairman of the board of shipping companies Swedish American Mexico Line ‘SAML’ (1911– ) and Swedish American Line ‘SAL’ (1914– ); board member of AB Volvo (1917– ); chairman of the City Council (1923– ); co-founder, donor and first chairman of Carlanderska hospital (1927– ), as well as board member of other companies, banks, associations and foundations established for the benefit of business and society. SKF grew as a global company because of his successful industrial and corporate managerial strategies for its startup and growth during the first 30 years - for example in 1930 the company had 12 factories with 21,000 employees, two-thirds outside Sweden.
The main corporate strategies of SKF have always been focused on the development and maintenance of the manufactured bearings and the manufacturing bases. As an exception, in 1917 AB Volvo was established at SKF to construct an innovative type of car with the implementation of new bearings. In 1926, the subsidiary automobile company Volvo was founded as an engineering project by Assar Gabrielsson, Bjorn Prytz and Gustaf Larson, and separated as an independent company in 1935. With this innovative startup project, SKF once again contributed to the Swedish and global machine industry development.
Axel Carlander was CEO of SKF from 1907 to 1937 and died in 1939. Sven Wingqvist was CEO of SKF from 1938 to 1953. Sven Wingqvist and Marcus Wallenberg were co-founders of Svenska Aeroplane Aktiebolaget (SAAB AB).
By 1912, SKF was represented in 32 countries and by 1930, a staff of over 21,000 were employed in 12 manufacturing facilities worldwide with the largest in Philadelphia, United States.
SKF began its operations in India in 1923 by establishing a trading outpost in Calcutta. The early operations involved the importing of automotive bearings. SKF India Ltd was incorporated in 1961 following a collaboration between AB SKF, Associated Bearing Co. Ltd and Investment Corp. of India Ltd. In 1963, SKF set up its first bearing factory in Pune, Maharashtra. [5]
Assar Gabrielsson, SKF sales manager, and Björn Prytz, Managing Director of SKF, were the founders of Volvo AB in 1926. In the beginning, the company functioned as a subsidiary automobile company within the SKF group. SKF funded the production run of the first thousand cars, built at Hisingen in Gothenburg, beginning in 1927. SKF used one of the company's trademarked names: AB Volvo, which derives from the Latin "I roll", with its obvious connotations of bearings in motion. The ownership of Volvo lasted until 1935, when the last shares were divested.
During the Second World War, Sven Wingvist was CEO of SKF and Jacob Wallenberg was member of the company's board of SKF directors. The Wallenberg-owned ball-bearing multinational, SKF, supplied the German military with ball-bearing and ball-bearing machines, and had a monopoly on it in Europe. SKF also supplied the Allies with ball-bearings. SKF's ball-bearings were Sweden's most important strategic contribution to German war production. In the spring of 1944, the Swedish government, along with the Wallenbergs, promised the Allies that the export of ball-bearings would cease. However, SKF continued to export. When this could not be done legally, the ball-bearings were smuggled to Germany. As late as 1945, SKF sold ball-bearing steel and ball-bearing machines to Hitler. It has been estimated that the supply of ball-bearings prolonged World War II by two years. SKF actively worked to cut off the supply of ball-bearings to the defense industry in the US and instead supplied products from its American factories to Nazi Germany through subsidiaries in South America.
In order to expand its international business, SKF decided in 1966 it needed to use the English language. Senior officials, although mostly still Swedish, all learned English in all major internal documents were in English, the lingua franca of multinational corporations. [6] In the 1970s SKF embarked on a massive production rationalisation program in Europe. A visionary project, "Production Concept for the 80s" was launched with the aim to run the night shifts practically unmanned. To increase productivity and safeguard the product quality, a continuous, automatic flow of bearing rings was needed, so SKF developed the FlexLink brand. FlexLink created the multiflex plastic chain conveyor system to solve the business requirements. SKF divested FlexLink as a separate company in 1997.
Today, SKF Group continues to be a global leader in the manufacture and maintenance of increasingly advanced bearings, such as the SKF Explorer and SKF Energy Efficient (E2).
SKF sells products within five technology platforms:
The SKF Group currently consists of approximately 150 companies, including the seal manufacturer Chicago Rawhide. Since its founding, SKF's company headquarters have been located in Gothenburg. One recent[ when? ] acquisition was that of Economos, part of Salzer Holding, an Austria-based seal company, Jaeger Industrial and ABBA, Taiwanese manufacturers of linear actuators. The company's clients include General Electric, Rolls-Royce plc and Pratt & Whitney. It also supplies bearings for Ferrari racing vehicles, used in Formula One races, [7] and is a sponsor of F1. Then SKF became sponsor of Team Penske in the NASCAR Cup Series since 2012, Then in 2017 SKF became as Brad Keselowski sponsor in #2 Ford Fusion and #22 Ford Mustang in Xfinity Series, Previously, it is Sponsor of Richard Childress Racing, and Roush Fenway Racing, SKF is Sponsor of Ducati Corse in MotoGP since 2015. Another focus area is the energy sector, including wind turbines which generate electricity.
By 2011, SKF Industrial Market, Regional Sales and Services, made up about 40% of SKF's total sales. [8]
In 2021, SKF had a total net sales of 81.73 billion kr. [1] : 3
SKF India, established in 1961, is the company's Indian subsidiary. [9] SKF India is publicly listed on the National Stock Exchange of India and the Bombay Stock Exchange. [10] The company has a large presence in the Indian bearing industry. As of 2021, SKF India has 3 manufacturing facilities and 12 offices across India. [9] SKF India employs 1762 people, more than 1900 suppliers and 455 authorized distributors. [11] In total SKF has a pan India footprint consisting of 6 manufacturing facilities, 3 part of other SKF Units in India.
SKF runs its own business excellence program for continuous improvement (Kaizen) of its business processes in all parts of the company. The program is based on previous initiatives like TQM and integrates with lean management also statistical methods of Six Sigma along with related project management. [12] Many elements of this SKF program remind of the integrated approach of the actual EFQM model for Business Excellence.
The Group has a global certification to ISO 14001 (environmental management system), ISO 50001 (energy management) and OHSAS 18001 (health and safety) standards. Its operations are also certified to either ISO 9001 or applicable customer industry standards, e.g. ISO/TS 16949 (automotive), AS9100 (aviation), or IRIS (railway) for quality management systems.
The Volvo Group is a Swedish multinational manufacturing corporation headquartered in Gothenburg. While its core activity is the production, distribution and sale of trucks, buses and construction equipment, Volvo also supplies marine and industrial drive systems and financial services. In 2016, it was the world's second-largest manufacturer of heavy-duty trucks with its subsidiary Volvo Trucks.
A ball bearing is a type of rolling-element bearing that uses balls to maintain the separation between the bearing races.
The Gothenburg School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg is one of Sweden's leading business schools, located in Gothenburg. It was founded in 1923 as an independent business college and is situated in the centre of the city. In 1961, it was integrated into the state-run university system, still as a separate college, but was then integrated into the University of Gothenburg in 1971.
In mechanical engineering, a rolling-element bearing, also known as a rolling bearing, is a bearing which carries a load by placing rolling elements between two concentric, grooved rings called races. The relative motion of the races causes the rolling elements to roll with very little rolling resistance and with little sliding.
A thrust bearing is a particular type of rotary bearing. Like other bearings they permanently rotate between parts, but they are designed to support a predominantly axial load.
The Wallenberg family is a prominent Swedish family renowned as bankers, industrialists, politicians, bureaucrats and diplomats, present in most large Swedish industrial groups, like Ericsson, Electrolux, ABB, SAS Group, SKF, AIK, Atlas Copco, Saab AB, and more. In the 1970s, the Wallenberg family businesses employed 40% of Sweden's industrial workforce and represented 40% of the total worth of the Stockholm stock market.
Leif Valdemar Johansson is a Swedish businessman. He was President and CEO of the Volvo Group from 1997 to 2011 and Chairman of Ericsson from 2011 until 2017 and is currently Chairman of AstraZeneca plc. In 2012, the Fokus Magazine ranked him as Sweden's 6th most powerful person.
Sven Gustaf Wingqvist was a Swedish engineer, inventor, and industrialist, and one of the founders of Svenska Kullagerfabriken (SKF), one of the world's leading ball bearing and roller bearing makers. Sven Wingqvist invented the multi-row self-aligning ball bearing in 1907.
Assar Thorvald Nathanael Gabrielsson was a Swedish industrialist and co-founder of Volvo.
Erik Gustaf Larson was a Swedish automotive engineer and the co-founder of Volvo. He held a Master of Science (M.Sc.) degree in mechanical engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
Björn Gustaf Prytz was a Swedish industrialist in the early 1900s and from 1938 to 1946 Minister Plenipotentiary in London for the Swedish government.
NTN Corporation is one of the most prominent manufacturers of bearings in Japan, second domestically only to NSK Ltd. The company is one of the largest exporters worldwide of friction-reducing products, such as constant-velocity joints.
Auburn Bearing & Manufacturing is a designer and manufacturer of ball and roller thrust bearings and custom machined components and is owned and operated in the small town of Macedon in Upstate New York. Founded in 1898, Auburn Bearing is one of the oldest continuously operating thrust ball bearing manufacturers in the United States. Auburn Bearing & Manufacturing is most known for its line of thrust bearings that incorporate a "V" groove raceway, historically known as the "Auburn Groove," which is specifically designed to reduce rolling friction by containing the ball bearings with four points of contact.
A spherical roller bearing is a rolling-element bearing that permits rotation with low friction, and permits angular misalignment. Typically these bearings support a rotating shaft in the bore of the inner ring that may be misaligned in respect to the outer ring. The misalignment is possible due to the spherical internal shape of the outer ring and spherical rollers. Despite what their name may imply, spherical roller bearings are not truly spherical in shape. The rolling elements of spherical roller bearings are mainly cylindrical in shape, but have a profile that makes them appear like cylinders that have been slightly over-inflated.
The automotive industry in Sweden is mainly associated with passenger car manufacturers Volvo Cars and Saab Automobile but Sweden is also home of two of the largest truck manufacturers in the world: AB Volvo and Scania AB. The automotive industry is heavily dependent on export as some 85 percent of the passenger cars and 95 percent of the heavy vehicles are sold outside of Sweden. The automotive industry and its sub-contractors is a major part of Swedish industry. In 2011 around 110,000 people were employed and the export income of 150 billion SEK accounted for 12 per cent of Sweden's export income. During 2009 128,738 passenger cars and 27,698 heavy vehicles were built in Sweden. Koenigsegg is also a famous Swedish company which makes some of the fastest cars in the world, but also some of the most expensive. They currently produce models such as the Jesko, Gemera, and CC850.
Ovako AB is a European manufacturer of engineering steel for customers e.g. in the bearing, transportation and manufacturing industries. Since 2018, Ovako has been owned by Nippon Steel Corporation.
A spherical roller thrust bearing is a rolling-element bearing of thrust type that permits rotation with low friction, and permits angular misalignment. The bearing is designed to take radial loads, and heavy axial loads in one direction. Typically these bearings support a rotating shaft in the bore of the shaft washer that may be misaligned in respect to the housing washer. The misalignment is possible due to the spherical internal shape of the house washer.
Pollard Ball and Roller Bearing Company with its headquarters at Ferrybridge, West Yorkshire was a manufacturer of ball and roller bearings founded by John King. Formerly it had been known as Ferrybridge Industries and was originally a small family motor repair firm, Whitehouse Motor Industries, Ford dealers. Ferrybridge owned Pollard Bearings Limited.