John Paxton put his finger on the button when he confirms that, while there is a high focus on safety world-wide, in the US users live in a highly litigious society where people are prepared to sue as soon as anything goes wrong.
Paxton, who is president of Demag Cranes & Components North America, the Parent of Crane America Services (CAS), adds: “As a consequence our customers are increasingly outsourcing service. There is a definite trend along these lines, particularly when it comes to meeting the requirements of Occupational Safety & Health Administration – the US government’s arm of occupational safety – inspections.”
He continues: “This is key, if only because customers are looking for crane experts to come in and take care of and document these important inspections for them. Today, many more customers also do regular inspections and preventive maintenance to keep their crane and hoist systems in safe operating condition.”
Customers are always looking for a greater amount of uptime, Paxton says. “Today some service providers can collect data electronically and then save it to a website that a customer can reference.”
This enables the hoist manufacturer to visit a customer with a hand-held PDA or laptop, fill out an inspection form, e-mail him the information and then have a database where maintenance records can be accessed. Demand for new technology is growing because customers have a bigger appetite for information and documentation. “It is also a much more efficient process, as opposed to hand-written reports and typing,” adds Paxton.
CAS has provided electrical and mechanical services in the US for industrial customers for over 30 years. CAS is a subsidiary company of Demag Cranes & Components and operates from 31 locations in the US market. “Although they work like a local company, servicing local customers, they are part of a world-wide company,” explains Paxton.
He continues: “We believe that we get the best of both worlds in that you can get the synergies of a national company but you are working in the local markets with local sales people, service technicians and branch managers – but then all the branches roll up into one larger company.”
He says its service network is spread out primarily in the Mid-West, East and South East with three locations out on the West Coast. “With the leadership of the new President of CAS, Dave Sinkhorn, and the experience of our employees, there is certainly opportunity to grow,” he concludes.
Konecranes president and CEO Pekka Lundmark reckons local markets embrace the hands-on approach to after-sales. He has targeted 10% organic and 5% acquisitional growth in the service sector. Konecranes has started to put an increasing emphasis on after-sale service. “You need to bring the company to a certain position before you can prioritise service,” he adds.
Lundmark continues: “Today over 90% of our annual service agreements are renewed. We strongly believe in our own abilities and dare to make promises where we tie our success to that of our customers. By delivering safe and reliable lifting equipment and service, we reduce the total cost of ownership for our customers and provide them with a good return on investment.”
Konecranes has more than 80 years of experience in overhead lifting, and a long history of providing world-class service on all makes and models of overhead lifting equipment. Today, Konecranes is focused on lowering costs through preventive maintenance and improving performance through better technology.
Konecranes’ service solutions include inspections, maintenance programmes, modernisations, installations, repairs, spare parts, consulting and training services, and ports and a harbour service. It has over 2,000 service technicians in over 40 countries that are on-call and able to respond 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
In the US and Canada, Konecranes operates over 100 service locations, with service solutions for all makes and models of overhead lifting equipment. “Overhead cranes represent a significant investment for companies, ” says Konecranes vice president, business development, Mike Williams. “Maintaining that investment by maximising equipment performance and up time is a high priority,” he says.
“We’ve pioneered the MAINMAN maintenance management programme that demonstrates real results to the customer,” adds Williams. “Customers using this programme can expect 10 to 20% savings on the lifetime expenses on equipment.”
MAINMAN services all makes and models of cranes and hoists and positively impacts the bottom line utilising a step-by-step approach. “Proactive measures minimise down time and increase overall production,” says Williams. “If you leave maintenance to chance, chances are the worst possible problem will occur at the worst possible time. This programme puts you in control of maintenance rather than letting maintenance control you.”
The company’s crane and hoist inspection results are now available online at www.mycrane.com, which is a secure web site that makes it easy to maintain a comprehensive service and inspection history of overhead lifting equipment. Users can access their crane and hoist inspection results from Konecranes in one easily accessible portal from virtually any location with internet access. Navigation through the system is made simple by selecting one of four sections: reports, service, equipment, and maintenance.
The DeSHAZO Service Company, with headquarters located in Birmingham, Alabama, is another leading provider of parts and services for overhead cranes in North America. DeSHAZO has established regional offices in Indianapolis, Indiana; Charlotte, New Connecticut; Greenville and Columbia, South Carolina; Atlanta, Georgia; Knoxville, Tennessee; and West Palm Beach, Florida.
“Our 20,000 sq ft shop/office facility in conjunction with the company’s 100,000 sq ft manufacturing plant and engineering facilities in Birmingham enable us to provide our service customers with the engineering and manufacturing capabilities of a leading OEM crane company coupled with a broad range of after market services,” says DeSHAZO president David Hovey.
“We can supply you with OEM parts for all makes of cranes and hoists. Our skilled technicians can perform inspections, repairs, modernisations and rebuilds of your overhead cranes and hoisting equipment in the field at your site,” he adds. DeSHAZO has over 6,000 overhead cranes in service world-wide in North America, South America and the Middle East.”
What about the smaller company?
I spoke to the marketing manager of Gorbel, Jeff McNeil. “We don’t really offer service on our range of products,” says McNeil. “We tend to leave it to our local distributors who are obviously able to provide a local solution. In the crane business you need to have some local presence. Only the big national companies have the resources to provide a lot of regional or local offices.”
He adds: “We also have a lot of distributors that make crane systems that have crane services component to them but we, as Gorbel, don’t see a need to be in the service business. That does change a little bit for our G Force product because it is a sufficiently technical product for us to support distributors with service issues.”
The one-stop-shop also seems to play a key role in the in the maintenance programmes played by the national players. In addition to DeSHAZO’s field service capabilities, the company’s technicians can rebuild crane parts and components in their so-called Swap Shop at a “fraction of the cost of new with a one-year warranty.”
Similarly, Crane Pro Parts is Konecranes one-stop-shop for all brands of crane and hoist parts and accessories. Crane Pro Parts supplies replacement parts for all makes of overhead cranes, including older cranes that are no longer manufactured.
So, if a company has multiple cranes from several different makers, chances are they are spending valuable time tracking down parts for each one. Crane Pro Parts says it provides one of the best sources for replacement parts. It, too, say its prices are competitive.
“If we don’t already have the part you need in our computerised, multi-million-dollar in-stock inventory, our engineering and fabrication department can quickly design and manufacture custom solutions, meeting both your timetable and all CSA, CMAA, FEM, HMI, AMSI and AISE standards for overhead cranes.”
It would seem that most of America’s leading industrial overhead lifting equipment suppliers want to provide a local service on a national basis. It’s just that some do it better than others. It all depends upon the size of the company. The arrival of online technology may well make maintenance systems that much more efficient but, no matter how much technology progresses, it would appear that there is nothing like the common touch.
Konecranes has started to put an increasing emphasis on after-sale service service 4 Konecranes president and CEO Pekka Lundmark reckons local markets embrace the hands-on approach to after-sale service service 3 Demag papermaster cranes at work service 2 Konecranes has more than 80 years of experience in overhead lifting, and a long history of providing world-class service on all makes and models of overhead lifting equipment service 1 Today, Konecranes is focused on lowering costs through preventive maintenance and improving performance through better technology service 5 CAS has provided electrical and mechanical services in the US for industrial customers for over 30 years. CAS is a subsidiary company of Demag Cranes & Components and operates from 31 locations in the US market service 6 Gorbel says it tends to leave service to local distributors who are obviously able to provide a local solution. ‘In the crane business you need to have some local presence. Only the big national companies have the resources to provide a lot of regional service 7 John Paxton, who is president of Demag Cranes & Components North America, says while there is a high focus on safety world-wide, in the US users live in a highly litigious society where people are prepared to sue as soon as anything goes wrong service 8
