Swiss wire processing manufacturer Schleuniger is continuously enhancing service in more than 50 countries worldwide. This requires efficient processes and structures as well as a dedicated global team responding quickly to a variety of different problems. Rudy Vit, Executive Vice President Sales, illustrates how Schleuniger meets the challenges.
How important is local service to your customers?
When buying Schleuniger wire processing equipment, our customers expect a very reliable high precision machine that will yield them a quick return on investment. Competent commissioning, operator training and technical service are also considered a prerequisite for efficient use of the purchased machine. This becomes even more important in a world where companies require top processing quality in combination with high machine availability to be able to meet the growing need of quality in their products. Any downtime results in higher costs per processed cable, delivery problems, or in the worst case even losing orders and customers. Competent, knowledgeable local service with short response times, high spare part availability and a flexible, solution-oriented attitude is essential in preventing operator mistakes or machine failure. Of course, by purchasing a Schleuniger machine, our customers have already made a big step towards preventing downtime and assuring quality processing of their wires.
How do you assure fast local response to solve machine problems?
In most cases, a telephone call to the local sales and service partner suffices to find the quickest possible solution. Local service technicians assist the customer to identify the source of the problem and help in taking immediate corrective actions. If the problem cannot be solved over the phone, a service technician will provide field-service directly at the customer’s location. It is important that customers can communicate with the service technician in the local language so that problems created by language barriers are eliminated from the start. To assure qualified maintenance and fast troubleshooting many companies that think ahead, purchase an additional service contract or extended warranty with their machine.
What are the benefits of service contracts?
Preventive maintenance plays a vital role in prolonging the lifecycle of any machine and securing precise results. The visits can be scheduled on a regular basis or whenever the customer has the time to stop the machine. This periodic visit is very beneficial in that it assures that the machines are kept in correct functioning order. Extended warranty allows the customer to calculate expenses for repair work and minimize the risk of extra costs. Especially if the machine runs three shifts, maintenance and warranty increase lifetime and value significantly.
As a global company, how do you make local service available worldwide?
Schleuniger offers local service in more than 50 countries through a global network of subsidiaries and long-standing sales and service partners. Although the range of services offered may differ from country to country, we follow a clear strategy of providing standardized core services all over the world. It is one of the strengths of our decentralized organization model that we are able to customize service so that it is in balance with local customer expectations without compromising our high quality standards.
Which factors constitute high quality service?
To ensure precise service quality, you need communications, competence and worldwide capacity. The entire service organization, with its related processes and systems, actively support these three success factors with a motivated team dedicated to continuous improvement.
Customers can communicate in their language with the local service engineer that has the technical knowledge and training. These are backed up by highly qualified technical support staff in regional branch offices and the head offices of our manufacturing facilities. Whether on-site, travelling or in the office, modern communication methods offer tools for real time transmission of voice, picture and data that facilitate troubleshooting that results in quick solutions for the customer.
At Schleuniger, all service engineers are regularly trained in standardized qualification programs and all technical changes or new application possibilities are globally communicated using an internal online information system. In addition, a technical knowledge database allows service technicians to check whether a similar problem has occurred before and how that problem was solved.
We also closely monitor that our service capacity is always in line with the number of machines in a given geographical area. Not only do we need the human resources but also a very high spare part availability. Most critical parts must be in stock directly at the local sales and service organization to ensure that key components can be replaced quickly.
You mentioned the importance of service organization. What is the main challenge in running such an organization?
We profit from close personal and professional relationships with our partners and customers. It’s a great challenge to implement and put into place systems and structures to this multi-cultural global network of people so as to meet global bench marks or even set the bench marks in specific industry segments. Clear communication, well defined processes and unconditional support are absolutely essential. The positive atmosphere in our company spreads worldwide and motivates our employees and partners to take customer problems seriously. It’s our goal to make it everyones personal job in our organisation to not only solve a problem, but to create and keep the highest standard of customer satisfaction.
EPP Europe 415
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