At EWES, our values are not something that stays on paper. They shape how we work, how we collaborate and how we take on both our own challenges and those of our customers.
One conversation changes everything
In the 1980s, slide rules and calculating discs are used to calculate springs. Sometimes it works. And sometimes it doesn't.
At this time, the brothers Kjell and Klas Svensson are the driving forces of the company. With drawings, suitcases and curiosity, they travel the world to show what technology and persistence can achieve.
One day, at Gardermoen Airport in Norway, they run into two engineers from Garphyttan, the spring steel manufacturer. They are old business acquaintances and like-minded problem solvers. The conversation quickly turns to springs, and the brothers mention that they lack a computer that can make exact spring calculations. The engineers answer without hesitation: we'll sort that out.
A few days later, one of them calls, and the agreement is as simple as it is brilliant: he develops the program and EWES gets exclusive rights for one year. The contract is signed, and the program is written in BASIC.
EWES first in the world
With the new computer and the custom-developed program, EWES can digitise its spring calculations for the first time. A piece of pioneering work that makes the company the first in the world with such a solution.
Shortly afterwards, Kjell and Klas travel to Rank Xerox in the USA, the company that transformed the office world with its photocopiers and is now struggling with an unexpected problem: the paper jams. The spring that is supposed to control the flow is incorrectly dimensioned.
Using the new computer, Klas analyses the problem and quickly finds the cause. The spring has been taken from a standard catalogue and not designed for the purpose. With exact calculations from EWES, the fault is corrected, the machines work and the collaboration grows.
Rank Xerox is so impressed that they invite Klas over for further work. Over three intensive weeks he works on site, producing new spring calculations for the company's entire design catalogue. The assignment marks the beginning of a new, digital era in EWES' history.
Ultimately, the story of the BASIC program is not about technology. It is about attitude. About the courage to see a problem, the will to take responsibility for it and the ability to create a solution even when one does not yet exist. This is what is summed up today in one of EWES' core values: Enabler. Being an enabler means not settling for standard solutions, but using knowledge, experience and collaboration to solve both our own challenges and those of our customers. Then, as now.
