From pizza chef to technical jack-of-all-trades

Man in front of mountain.

Arne Johansson really enjoys his job as a technician at VTI. He’s done a bit more travelling in recent years, as you can see from this photo taken on the Trollstigen road in Norway. Photo: Private.

A major change in his career path: that’s how Arne Johansson describes his journey from pizza chef to technician and chief foreman at the VTI workshop. This is a job requiring lots of skills, not least ingenuity and creativity.

“My work is most enjoyable when I’m given a sketch or a drawing and fabricate a part, a gadget or a machine. I can then appreciate the outcome – which, I hope is successful! – and take satisfaction in seeing the client pleased,” he says.

That seems to happen quite often, because most of the time Arne Johansson looks happy and content when people him see him wandering around the corridors of VTI in Linköping. He seems to enjoy his job, which involves assisting researchers and colleagues with anything they want help with.

But initially, he didn’t find it easy to choose a career. In senior school, he found it hard to decide what direction to go in. When his careers officer asked him what he liked doing, baking and cooking sprang to mind. So he ended up studying food technology and training as a chef. He spent five years working as a pizza chef at a new restaurant in the Berga district of Linköping. But then he stopped enjoying the job.

“I was always very keen on tinkering with things, even when I was little. I built soapbox carts, tinkered with bikes and mopeds. When I got my first car, I often worked on it until late at night.”

So he gave up his job at the pizzeria, did three months of labour market training on welding instead, and found himself a job at BT, now Toyota Material Handling. But he didn’t stay there long on account of problems with his health.

“The fumes gave me heartburn, but that went away as soon as I left the job. Instead, I ended up working as a metalworker for a sheet metal company for 15 years.”

After that, he ended up doing a similar job at FAKAB Plåt- och Stålentreprenad AB. Working as a construction metalworker turned out to be hard and cold. For example, he ended up having to screw roofing sheets into position when the temperature was 23 degrees below freezing. Even doing something as simple as taking a screw out of his pocket was hard work.

So then he found his dream job at VTI in 2010. His wife saw the VTI ad and his qualifications turned out to be a good match.

“I’d worked as a foreman before and welded lots of different things, learning through training courses, various jobs, and as a child. I’ve made and built my own house, a garage and a woodshed.”

Some of the latest designs made at the VTI workshop are the mini simulators, the bike simulator and the driving simulator for World of Volvo in Gothenburg. In simple terms, this is a motion platform that simulates sharp braking aboard a bus. Visitors to the museum get to experience what it feels like when the bus brakes.

The driving simulator at World of Volvo has been paid for externally, as are the frequent assignments from SGI, the Geological Survey of Sweden, VTI’s neighbour in Linköping.

“Our cooperation is fantastic, we develop machines that we then go on to manufacture and sell. Most customers contact us, but I also have my own networks of contacts and get customers from there,” says Arne Johansson.

One idea he has at the moment involves getting in touch with a company in Linköping that manufactures digital signs displaying information about bus times. That could potentially lead to a collaboration.
“In-house at VTI, the crash safety lab requires the most effort. We service the crash setup if anything breaks, and we can repair the rig at short notice.”

At home, he’s built himself a little museum in his garage with three fabulous cars, two little kennels and an old Ford. He also collects enamel signs, and three out of four of his walls are full of them. But he’s given up repairing things.

“I don’t have to go fixing things these days, I like spending my time travelling with my family. We went to Thailand last year. This winter we’ll be skiing, possibly in Italy. We took a trip to Norway recently and drive the Trollstigen road. I like to drive around in my motorhome when I get some time off, and I have a little boat that I often sail, too.”

Text: Gunilla Rech

Translation: CBG

Arne Johansson

Age: 60.

Job title: Technician.

Field of work: The workshop develops and maintains VTI’s engineering equipment, including machining, turning, milling, welding and bending of sheet metal. This is what’s known as a prototype workshop that also manufactures parts and equipment to order, items that aren’t available elsewhere. This is often done in close collaboration with VTI’s researchers.

The workshop takes on both internal and external jobs. VTI’s driving simulators, VTI’s tyre testing facility, friction measurement equipment, test equipment for the automotive industry, lab equipment for road construction and geotechnical engineering and various stainless steel and aluminium structures for the construction industry are just a few examples. The workshop employs four staff, and the workload is fairly consistent.

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