By Diana Agudelo
As he says, "I was raised in a humble home of working families, with parents very busy in pursuing a solid education for myself and my brother. These were times of great sacrifices, with different possibilities than those we have today and with many needs. My parents helped for the first two basic stages of study. The secondary school was very important, because of the solid technical training acquired there and because it inclined me to choose the professional career of my life."
At the beginning of college he had to start working to pay for his career. He studied at the National Technological University where in 1982 he graduated as a Mechanical Engineer. "My first jobs were in small industrial workshops, where I started to gain some experience. I continued as a teacher of subjects of the last years of technical schools until in 1978 I began to work in the technical department of a boilermaking workshop, where special parts were made for thermoelectric plants. I wasn't lucky enough to get a job in big companies, but maybe having had to work in small industries, where absolutely everything had to be done, it helped my professional training."
A new life is born
The next step to this first incorporation into the industry related to thermal processes was already in the industrial refrigeration industry, an activity in the Osorio has been working for 24 years. He is currently the partner and director of INDA Refrigeración S.A., an engineering company dedicated to the execution of industrial refrigeration projects and works.
"My link with the industry was given from the educational training acquired, I was fortunate to have always worked in companies related to thermodynamics. The partners of the company where I started working in the industry, had in turn an industrial refrigeration company to which I joined for their engineering department. There began my interest and affection for industrial refrigeration until it became what today is a true passion for this activity".
The Argentine economic crisis of 2001 meant that he had to leave the company. It was those very difficult times. But one of his great friends Guillermo Biondo, took him to work at the company in Chile where he is Sales Manager. There he continued his activity, working in the Engineering Department for two years. For this mentor, Osorio has the greatest thanks, as well as to the company and that country, which allowed him to recover his quality of life and interact with important people in the world of refrigeration.
"Thanks to the number of friends that I have collected over so many years of work and the recognition achieved for so many works executed, I am a happy man, so I decided it was time to create my own venture, so I partnered with the engineer Norberto De Angelis, an outstanding professional of industrial assemblies, to form INDA Refrigeración S.A."
The company and its challenges
This Argentine believes that there is always something that can be incorporated into the company to improve it, for this he carefully analyzes each element and each opportunity, taking into account that you can not stop attending to the technological advances that occur. For example, one of the challenges facing your company is the fact that developments are coming for the energy economy and for the preservation of the planet, it is these issues in which your company works hard and in which there is a lot of work when evaluating the operating conditions of many plants to solve their problems of use energy and improve your economic equation.
"We are also seeing solutions for concept changes in the use of refrigerants; in Argentina there are very large refrigeration plants that use significant amounts of refrigerant, we are developing projects to change that concept. We must also incorporate the idea of industrial safety in the design of equipment, in its operation and in the safety of refrigeration plants".
To demonstrate how much THE COMPANY INDA has invested in the future, its motto "solutions in industrial refrigeration" fully demonstrates its obligation to the future. "As director of the company I am committed to the incorporation of all these advances and to the professional and serious treatment in all these issues. I transmit that idea to my collaborators and I am demanding in terms of its implementation and the results."
Ricardo Osorio, affirms with some happiness that in industrial refrigeration almost all jobs are special and there are never two alike, so each one constitutes an anecdote; however he does not hesitate to remember one in particular "in an important job that we managed to win in Chile, we had to make a very great professional effort, the purchase decision was delayed for a year, during which time I persisted in working each of the changes that were proposed, I almost lost my job because of so much dedication to a project that did not materialize, but in the end when the client made the decision he did it for us, I think in reward for so much effort; the client decided to give us the construction of the grape treatment rooms with sulphur dioxide, something I had no idea about and in which I had to get involved."
Commitment and dedication
For INDA Refrigeration the main objectives are to satisfy the needs of its customers, so they also have to be prepared to provide services and provide help to their employees and motivation for their training.
"I have little experience as a manager, I don't even know if I'm a manager, but as responsible people, we all have a lot to contribute to companies, I think knowledge and dedication are the things that distinguish, both difficult to achieve effortlessly."
In industrial refrigeration it is difficult to have professionals and people who know in depth everything necessary for the development of the activity, the training of these people is achieved after many years of work, however it is also very common to see new ventures with others that do not complete all the learning.
To make sure his work gets his full attention, Ricardo Osorio works hard from eight in the morning until six in the afternoon. "Usually, as I think it will happen to many people, I can not address all the issues I have on the agenda, because of the special characteristics of the jobs and in a changing economy like ours it takes me a long time to make costs of a project that in its essentially technical part is solved in a short time, in that companies must change to be more dynamic and adjust to the ups and downs to which we do not finish getting used to".
But his commitment is not limited only to the professional field, his family is the most important thing for Osorio, "I have a beautiful family composed of my lady María Cristina (who is a Public Accountant) and three children, Florencia of 27 years about to finish her degree in chemistry, Ignacio, 20, who is studying the second year of mechanical engineering, and Macarena, 16, who finishes school next year." Its simplicity immediately impacts, because it does not last in thanking them, their closest ones, who consider their work and for how happy they do it.
Ricardo Osorio is a complete professional, he was fortunate to have worked in his country and also outside it, having known so many Latin American markets he was able to venture an analysis of what happens in industrial refrigeration in the countries of the region and completes his reflection in this way: "it is not necessary to clarify that where there is economic solidity is where technological development is promoted, also according to my point of view it occurs intensely only in those countries that show with their political actions that in the future great economic changes will not happen there, today shareholders demand guarantees to support their investment. It seems to me that those who invest in education have greater possibilities, because that is the tool that enables development, those who do not will be relegated. With the growth of food production, the refrigeration industry will thrive and we will have to be prepared for it."
