Blog: Meet Silviu Cutulescu, Plant Manager at GTK RO

An integral part of GTK’s international success and a key figure at our Romanian factory in Craiova, Silviu Cutulescu is Plant Manager at GTK RO.

We chatted to Silviu about his career background, his day-to-day role and his achievements at our Romanian factory. We also discussed how our factory locations are integrated to best-support our customers. 

Can you tell us a little about your background and how you came to work at GTK Romania?

I have more than 20 years’ experience working in industrial environments and hold several qualifications from Craiova University. 

I have worked in manufacturing industries in various other leadership roles, working in quality, project management and supply chain roles at both a local and global level.

Back in 2023, I decided to join GTK Romania because I trust in our ability to build and develop the business, as well as our ability to be an important support for the local community.

Silviu Cutulescu, Plant Manager at GTK RO

What does your role involve on a day-to-day basis, and how has it evolved since you started?

First and foremost, I am responsible for keeping the facility a safe place. From there, customer focus and maintaining great working conditions are the most important considerations in my role.

Since joining the team, one of my main tasks has been increasing the plant capacity to support sales needs.

We switched the production and warehousing areas to increase the number of workstations and increased our number of overall operators. 

Our focus on the team and our working conditions has helped us become known as one of Craiova’s best employers and places to work. Since I joined the team 18 months ago, we’ve increased the number of overall staff from 64 to 87, helping us accommodate further changes in demand. 

What do you enjoy most about working at GTK Romania?

The smiles that I see every morning and the evolution of KPI results! 

I’ve been proud to take the lead on a number of community initiatives at GTK RO too – at Christmas, we collected goods for children, starting with a few small presents and reaching a huge number of toys and gifts. 

It was great to see people running with the idea, too – for the coming Easter, people took initiative and planned a similar concept themselves.

We also always do a feature for International Women’s Day, celebrating the women working throughout the business. 

Another fun event is the Family Day, held on June 1st, when we invite children into GTK to see their parents’ place of work and enjoy lots of fun games. This year, we had our best feedback yet, with plenty of children and their families bonding and sharing knowledge.

What makes GTK Romania stand out compared to other manufacturing facilities you’ve experienced or heard about?

Our organisational flexibility and agility are the main things, helping us keep customer satisfaction at the forefront of what we do.

Whether we’re discussing people, materials or engineering, the business is always working hard to provide the best solutions in the shortest possible time. We know how important good lead times are for helping drive sales, so we discuss on-time delivery a lot, to be sure we meet all customer deadlines.

Custom cable assembly production at GTK's facility in Romania.

GTK is known for custom cable assemblies – how does the Romanian team ensure high standards and flexibility in meeting complex requirements?

We are certified to ISO 9001 (2015), which ensures we follow a strong process at all times. 

More than that, however, we continuously invest in our people, developing their personal skillset and technical knowledge. We find collaboration between departments to be hugely important, and we spend a lot of time working with our operators to ensure that they’re happy and their knowledge is strong. 

We have one-to-one discussions with every operator and evaluate their efficiency throughout – if we’re in a position to support and accommodate them in any other way, we’ll do it. We do our best to make sure our team feel heard, and this has led to lots of improved results! 

How does GTK Romania collaborate with teams in the UK and China?

We have a close, strong relationship with our manufacturing locations in the Far East and especially the UK. We’ve worked to improve our integration, developing regular interplant meetings, while sharing information and support required both ways. 

Through collaboration between the UK and Romania, we have developed an efficient training matrix. We also use similar work instruction documents, other than specific workstations that might use dedicated equipment – this helps us ensure a seamless transition if moving our manufacturing location.  

Kaizen is another area where we’re working together – if we’ve implemented something that works well to increase efficiency, we’ll share ideas with the UK or vice-versa, so we’re always improving. 

What are the benefits – for customers – of GTK having multiple integrated manufacturing locations?

The main benefits for our customers are the way in which we maximise flexibility and minimise cost. 

The departments that we work most closely with – Sales and Engineering – are in the UK, near our customers. From a manufacturing perspective, using this blended manufacturing model allows us to deliver strong scalability and growth.

Having a hub in Romania means that we can supply products across all of Europe. We already have customers in Romania, and we intend to extend our market further into Eastern Europe.

Have you seen an increase in interest from European businesses recently? If so, what do you think is driving that?

Yes – 100%! 

We are for sure seeing an increase. We’re feeling that in real-time in the factory, and we’re increasing our capacity accordingly.

The main driving factor behind that, I think, is our people, and how we deal with those outside of the company. We offer strong and open communication with customers, great quality and processes that deliver on-time. 

We’re seeing particular growth in specialised markets, like industrial, broadcast, scientific, defence and others. 

What are you most proud of in your work at GTK Romania – either a project, milestone or moment?

I’m most proud when I observe our employees becoming more skilled and progressing through the organisation. We’ve also had great feedback after customer visits to our site, which was a great feeling! 

We've had great feedback from auditors and other figures within the company, too. One auditor returned to our plant after three years away and was incredibly impressed with our transformation, while Volex acknowledged that we do a great job of looking after our people with supportive wellbeing programmes.