Kaj Skjærbæk has worked with vibration equipment for almost 39 years: “The material handling keeps getting better”

“In 1984, getting a job at SKAKO was like winning the lottery”.

The words come from our senior engineer Kaj Skjærbæk, who has worked at SKAKO for almost 39 years. Back then, his brother helped him into the company, which was known for its good working conditions. 

And when Kaj looks back on his career, he did win the lottery in his own way:

“It has been some eventful years, especially in the 80s where I worked with installation tasks in Norway, France, Spain, the UK, and Germany for a couple of years. When I went to Norway on my first trip, I had never travelled by plane before and I had almost never been outside Denmark”, says Kaj.

“My job was to install vibration equipment like feeders in the mining industry and mussel sorting equipment on boats. I started up mussel sorting systems on 18 boats. I also remember installing oil sieves on an offshore platform. Then I got a girlfriend in Denmark, and the installation job was replaced by a job in SKAKO’s workshop in Denmark”.

Today, Kaj designs customized vibration solutions

Over the years, Kaj has worked with many different tasks, and he has been part of all SKAKO Vibration’s departments. Today, he designs vibration equipment for the hardware industry, e.g., vibratory feeders, vibratory conveyors, and lift tippers.

“I always design the equipment in close collaboration with the sales manager and the customer to meet the customer’s requirements in the best possible way. SKAKO Vibration offers a lot of different equipment, but we always customize it. My job never gets boring because no task is alike; the equipment should be based on the material it is supposed to handle. It makes a substantial difference whether the material is fine-grained, coarse-grained, wet, dry, etc. That is why I make a big effort to understand the customer’s production”, says Kaj.

Continuous improvement of the material handling

Even though Kaj has been in the business for many years, he still finds it interesting to work with vibration equipment:

“We learn something new almost every day. The vibration technology keeps improving, and over the years, it has become possible to handle more materials with our equipment. For instance, we recently supplied a solution that can handle long screws up to 360 mm to a Polish customer. Till then, the customer had to handle the screws manually because there had not been any solution for this purpose on the market”, tells Kaj.

The products are still the same – but SKAKO has become more modern

Times have changed since the 80s. Today, SKAKO is a modern, digital, and international company. Kaj especially points out how the COVID-19 pandemic – despite everything – has made SKAKO more digital:

“With Microsoft Teams, we can do our job no matter where we are. Also, Teams is a great tool for communication with the customer. I just share my screen and show the customer my drawings, and the customer comments on my work, and we can talk about changes as we speak. Together we can make even better solutions”, concludes Kaj.