On April 15, Tom Johnstone  assumed his position as the new president and CEO of AB SKF. He succeeded Sune Carlsson, who retired from SKF after heading the company for the past five years. At the time of his appointment, Tom Johnstone was executive vice president of AB SKF and president of the
Automotive Division.

Obviously I am delighted to have been given the opportunity to lead SKF on the next stage of its development. Over the past few years everyone in SKF has worked extremely hard to develop both the strong financial situation we have now and to move SKF into a more customer-focused company.

In this period we have started the development of the company into delivering solutions for our customers built on our STEP strategy – Service, Trading, Electronics and Partnership – and we can see examples of this in action in many different industries. A number of these customers have been featured in this and previous editions of Evolution, and I believe this clearly indicates the new direction of SKF.

We can see from the many customer awards we have won, the new businesses we have gained and our financial performance in the stock market that this new direction is bringing good results.

In the coming years we will build on this strong base and drive more into customer-focused solutions that deliver improved competitive advantage to our customers in all areas. There will be many activities to achieve this, but one area we will focus on much more is developing our skills and competencies – both by helping our existing employees develop themselves and by acquiring new competencies. In the future it will not be enough to have the right brand, products and processes to be successful. To have a real competitive advantage, you need also to have talented people – people that can tailor a product or service process to align with customers needs. This requires development, not just within SKF, but with our distributor and supplier partners as well. In the future we will involve both groups much more in the development of our business.

We aim to be the preferred company to all our stakeholders. To our customers we wish to become the preferred business partner by helping them improve their competitiveness. To our employees we want to become the preferred company to work for – the employer of choice. And to our shareholders we want to consistently deliver good earnings per share, and thus a good dividend.

SKF has a strong base – a wide range of products, unsurpassed technical competence and strong relationships with customers and partners. Now is the time to build and grow upon that base, to the benefit of all. This means better products for our customers and business growth for our distributors and suppliers, as well as expanded opportunities and personal development for our employees. I look forward to working with everyone within SKF and with our customers, distributors and suppliers to continue this exciting development.