Meet Robert - Senior Plant Controller

We’re proud to introduce Robert Wiksell, who has been part of our team in Jönköping since early 2024. Joining us as a Senior Plant Controller, Robert brought with him a deep passion for industry, shaped by growing up around manufacturing and building a strong career in the sector.

Since stepping into his role, Robert has been dedicated to translating production into financial insight—working closely with numbers, analysing costs and efficiency, and helping the organisation understand how we can continuously improve. His curiosity, analytical mindset and commitment to developing smarter ways of working make him a valuable contributor to our ongoing success.

1. Why did why you choose to join us?

I chose FläktGroup because it suited me as a person very well, I grew up in industry and have worked at many manufacturing companies before. So when this opportunity arose I was interested as I think our company has a very exciting future!

2. What does a typical day look like for you?

The short answer? It depends! No two days are the same as everything is governed by what is most important at the time, and that can change quickly. I work a lot with numbers and reports. As a controller, my task is to put numbers on what we do in production – to translate reality into economics.

By digging into costs and efficiency, we get to see in black and white how we can improve. I help to understand the results and pass it on both internally within Jönköping and upwards in the organisation.

3. What is the most important thing about your role and how do you contribute most to the business?

We contribute by calculating and identifying what is ineffective. I help calculate possible savings and improvements. We can look at the figures both in isolation and also from a larger perspective, short-term and long-term. In the end, it's all about us becoming more profitable.

4. What is the most fun thing about your job?

To learn new things and understand, I always want to develop. I start putting together a good analysis, to be able to see things in a new way, e.g. to be able to explain connections in a way that we have not done before.

5. What skills do you think are most important in your role?

You need an interest in how things work, an interest in manufacturing, then you also need an interest in IT and systems to get out and understand the data generated in the business. In the end, you need an analytical mind to process this data to make decisions. Excel is a critical tool for me for the last bit.

6. Do you have any advice for someone who is curious about working in controlling?

That it is only you who sets the limits, so be curious and familiarise yourself with it. If you think it's fun, there's no stopping - have a will and ambition to understand our business, and you'll go a long way.

7. In what way do you contribute as a function to improving efficiency and cost control in production?

In practical terms, it will be other functions such as production technology and machine operators that make the actual change. What we contribute is to highlight and find inefficient flows, we identify where we need to work more efficiently.

We are completely dependent on the operational staff to make the change happen. We are a support function for Operations to understand the financial part of what they do in practice.

8. And finally can you tell us how you relate to FläktGroup's values, and what is important to you?

I relate to all the company values. To highlight two:

Ambition is one of the most important driving forces to becoming a good controller, it's what dictates how good you really want to be.

Teamwork is the most important value to do a good job, alone I can't do anything, but everything is done together with the whole organisation - whether it's purchasing or the management team or production technology. We all need to work together.