Capital Equipment News August 2018

are getting more and more sophisticated in managing their owning and operating (O&O) costs, highlighting the significance of total cost of ownership over the life of

equipment,” says Van der Walt. He further reasons that capital

equipment owners are realising more and more how significant the actual cost is. “In addition, cost pressures keep on increasing and equipment owners are also much more sensitive to the cost of downtime and low productivity. Securing funding has grown in importance and it is becoming more common that this is included in the initial financing of the equipment,” he says. Ben Buys, technical director – Equipment at Babcock, shares the same view, saying that the support for capital equipment has never been more important as margins continue to shrink. “Efficiency is of paramount importance, and this requires the right support at the right time and at a realistic value,” says Buys. Shubra Narasimhan, Caterpillar aftermarket solutions representative, Construction Industries, says helping customers to keep their machines working more efficiently and for longer is crucial. “Together with our dealer network we provide a wide range of solutions to support our customers throughout the working life of their Cat equipment – whether preventative maintenance, fast parts delivery, training or even machine rebuilds,” says Narasimhan. Speed of service matters There is so much emphasis on speed of service as the importance of uptime cannot be reiterated enough in today’s operating conditions. Buys says a short reaction time for service support is vital in containing downtime. “Support should be in the form of accurate diagnosis of the required service and then, more importantly, have the correct parts or components available to complete the repair. The latter is possibly more important when the supply chain relies on logistics to support the service effort,” says Buys. Van der Walt says speed of service is critical for customers as the cost of downtime is significant. That said, the required speed also depends on the customer’s maintenance practices. If the customer has a run-to-failure philosophy, stoppages will in general be unplanned and therefore the speed to respond critical. “If the customer has a more pro-active approach, more of the stoppages will be planned and therefore the responses in the support structures

Aftermarket support impacts the total operating and owning costs of the equipment.

Bell operates an 11 000n m² Global Logistics Centre located in Jet Park, Gauteng. The facility has a dedicated focus on aftermarket by delivering worldwide parts support.

QUICK TAKE

In the capital equipment industry, what matters more today, and has for a long time, is the service delivered after the product has been supplied

Equipment owners are getting more and more sophisticated in managing their owning and operating costs

Reliable aftermarket support is a key factor in helping end users lower their total cost of ownership

The Internet of Things in the equipment industry will in all likelihood provide a platform for the processing of all the raw data to predict trends which will then trigger particular support interventions

CAPITAL EQUIPMENT NEWS AUGUST 2018 15