He has now just retired and is looking forward to devoting himself to his many hobbies and to his family, including both children and grandchildren.
– Since the turn of the year, I have been a full-time retiree and it feels very good. My wife Anne retired before I did, and now we can both plan our days however we want, which is very nice, he explains with a smile.
Came into hydraulics by chance
That it was hydraulics he would devote himself to was mostly a coincidence, as it was for so many others at the time. After a four-year mechanical engineering education, during which he also completed a three-year business studies program, he applied for jobs and saw that Gillberg Hydraulik in Borlänge was looking for people.
– So I applied there and thought it sounded fun. That company was later acquired in several stages and eventually became part of Bosch Rexroth, as their largest workshop. My first job was as an assembler and repair technician for, among other things, Vickers’ and Denison’s product ranges. That was where my own learning journey in hydraulics began. He worked there between 1980 and 1982, when he and his then wife decided to move to Stockholm because she had found a job there.
– I then started at Maskin AB TUBE, where I worked in internal sales, supporting the field salespeople with different kinds of assistance. It was a constant hunt for components for customers. A major advantage was that I had a great deal of contact with many foreign suppliers and got to travel to them for training. Among other things, I became responsible for Wandfluh and visited them several times and learned about their different products. During that time, I also had the opportunity to take a marketing course at IHM, which TUBE paid for, something I appreciated very much.
Between Borlänge and Stockholm
He stayed there until 1990, when they chose to move back to Borlänge. There, he got a job at HägglundDenison, which had a small office in Borlänge.
– There were many major projects, including large hydraulic systems for paper mills. Then some changes took place within that company, and after a divorce I ended up back in Stockholm, at Denison there. Once I was back in Stockholm, I was contacted by TUBE, which wanted me to return to them, which I was happy to do. There I continued working with, among other things, Wandfluh’s components on the sales side. After a few years there, Jan-Åke Johansson was contacted by a former colleague, Annelie Söderberg. She was then working at Berendsen PMC and thought he should come and work for them.
– It felt appealing, both the job and moving back to Borlänge, and I decided to start there. I already knew Annelie well since we had worked together at Gillberg Hydraulik in Borlänge, so I trusted her when she said it was a good job, which it was, says Jan-Åke Johansson.
Always curious about new opportunities
Some time after he started at PMC, Annelie Söderberg left and instead began working at the training company Projekthydraulik.
– It was not long before she called again and tried to persuade me to start there, which I did. I have always been curious to develop and see where different opportunities can lead, which has made me willing to always try when new chances have come up. I also already knew Projekthydraulik from earlier, since I had taken courses there while I was working at Gillberg’s, he explains.
Has trained many hydraulic technicians
Projekthydraulik was founded in 1977 in Borlänge and from the beginning focused on training in hydraulics. They offer week-long courses both at their own facilities and out at customers’ sites, with participants from all over Sweden, Denmark, and also Swedish-speaking Finns.
– When I started, much of the work concerned training related to different safety issues, including lockout and isolation instructions that need to be clear. You need to be able to isolate at the right point, otherwise dangerous situations can arise because the forces within hydraulics are very large. We worked a great deal with large companies such as Outokumpu, where I was seconded for a year. Together with them, I developed recommendations for rebuilding systems to create a safer workplace after they had had accidents and incidents. Jan-Åke Johansson joined Projekthydraulik in 1999, and in 2017 he took over as CEO when Annelie Söderberg stepped down. He then remained in that role until 2025, when he chose to retire.
– I have always worked a lot with marketing issues and I can see what a huge difference there is today compared with the beginning of the 2000s. Back then, we sent out newsletters by email and already the next day we could have ten replies with course registrations. Today, not many people even open such newsletters, so you clearly have to work in other ways now.
Many exciting projects
Before he started at Projekthydraulik, he had opportunities to work on many interesting and challenging projects. He worked a lot with troubleshooting out at companies, and on one occasion he got to travel to Czechoslovakia, when the Iron Curtain was still in place.
– Gillberg Hydraulik had sold equipment to Tellus in Stockholm, which had delivered it to the Tatra works in Czechoslovakia, and they needed help refurbishing and installing hydraulic pumps. But when I got there, everything was already done; they had fixed it all themselves. They had asked for that help to lure us there. Instead, they wanted help getting the whole hydraulic system up and running and setting the correct parameters, he says. That was not what he had prepared for, so he stayed up all night reading through various hydraulic schematics and functional descriptions, and the next day he was able to get the system running properly.
– It was, however, very different working there compared with back home. They monitored every step I took and wrote down exactly everything I did. It was also a real industrial town, with very little happening there except that people went to and from work. The only thing the workers did for entertainment was, after work every day of the week, go to the only restaurant/pub near the workplace and drink themselves into a stupor. Later in the evening, all their wives came and led them home. At that time there was no unemployment there, so they could more or less do as they liked.
Refurbished acid-damaged systems in France
Another trip he made was to France. Gillberg had designed and sold a hydraulic system to a Swedish company, which had in turn sold it to a company in Nantes.
– There they had made a fatal mistake and accidentally filled the system with a type of acid; they had taken the wrong container when they were going to top up with oil. I then traveled there to try to save the system and had to replace essentially all seals and similar components that had been corroded by the acid. Those became intense days. He was picked up at 7 every morning and then worked straight through until 19, when he was driven back.
– They themselves often took long lunches. If the weather was nice, they sat outside and started with a few beers; if the weather was bad, they sat inside and drank rosé wine. The lunches then often lasted several hours. One thing that bothered me a lot was that they smoked constantly, those strong French Gauloises cigarettes. The man working with me always had a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth and blew the smoke in my face, Jan-Åke Johansson recalls with a smile.
Many weeks in hotels in Norway
At Projekthydraulik, there has been a great deal of work in Norway because in 2014 they were hired by the training company KRM to be responsible for the hydraulics training there.
– KRM bought an old screwdriver factory in Geilo and converted it into training premises and laboratory facilities. We at Projekthydraulik developed their hydraulics training with lectures, laboratory exercises and course materials. Since then, we have conducted their hydraulics courses, and almost every week during the spring and autumn terms someone from Projekthydraulik is there giving lectures and running lab sessions. So there has been quite a lot of travel to Norway over the years, and it became a bit special during the pandemic.
– Then there were major problems crossing the border, so we ended up having to stay there for four to five weeks each time, which was a bit hard, I can admit. The hydraulics training courses in Norway are aimed mainly at the offshore industry, but there are also many course participants from, for example, hydropower.
– A number of years ago, they had many problems with accidents, and after that there was a rush to the courses so that employees could increase their competence regarding their own hydraulic systems.
At times difficult periods
Jan-Åke Johansson has truly appreciated working with training; it gives a lot in return.
– It is wonderful to see the light bulb go on and for them to begin to see the connections. It is fun to see that they take so much away with them when they finish the courses. It feels very good to be able to contribute in that way. I have also met many very nice people over the years and have been fortunate to have very good colleagues. But it has not always been easy. Sometimes it has been tough to keep the company going, and at other times it has been difficult in other ways.
– When our colleague, and former editor-in-chief of Fluid Scandinavia, Lennart Strandberg, suddenly collapsed during a course and passed away, it became very hard for a while. We had known each other since childhood and worked closely together, so for him to just disappear overnight was very emotional. Then we also had problems keeping the training operations running; there was a lot of overtime for a period while at the same time you were grieving. But you just have to grit your teeth and move on. There is not much else you can do.
Not idle as a retiree
Now that he has chosen to retire, he is looking forward to being able to devote more time both to his family and his hobbies.
– In 1998 I married Anne and we do a lot together in our spare time. Once we put our bicycles on the roof and drove down to southern France and cycled around there. We travel a lot around Europe even without bicycles; we like Italy very much. When we are out on our travels, we take great pleasure in the network I have built up over the years with people at different companies. We get tips on good places to travel to, restaurants to visit and different activities, he says. Cycling is something he has done a lot over the years; among other things, he bought himself a mountain bike that he has used quite a lot, and there has also been a great deal of alpine skiing over the years.
– Now it is perhaps a little less skiing and more restoring old cars, an interest I have had for a long time. I recently finished restoring an old Jaguar, and right now there is an old Jeep from Miami, Florida, in the garage that I am working on. I am also looking at yet another old Jeep that seems interesting, he says with a smile. One advantage of retirement is also being able to devote more time to the family.
– Anne and I have two children each from previous marriages, and together we now also have five grandchildren, with whom it is great fun to do things. They also have a summer house in an old mill community.
– Well, perhaps community is too much to call it; there are two roads running through it. We have a cottage there that we expanded earlier, and right now we are building a new smaller house so that all the children and grandchildren will have room. So I am fully occupied and cannot say that I miss work, he concludes with a big smile.
