With the bulk of machine tools in the UK & Ireland being imported rather than produced on home soil, the end user must choose their product very carefully. Selecting a machine tool on brand, price or capability levels is never enough. If you want to optimise your plant purchases; service and support are the key factors. To this end, MTD spoke with industry leading Kyal Machine Tools to see how they do it…
Simon Pollard, the Managing Director of Kyal Machine Tools, told us: “We supply a complete support system for each of the products that we represent. We collaborate with the overseas machine tool supplier from the off. If a potential customer comes to us with a component drawing, we relay this information to the equipment manufacturer, so their project teams can put together a detailed proposal based around the manufacturing proposal that we feel is best and most efficient for the customer and their parts. This means the engineering side of things is handled at the machine manufacturers’ location. With regard to the installation and the turnkey work, this is also handled by the machine tool vendor.”
“Once Kyal take an order, we are fully responsible for commissioning the project, which includes service, spare parts and the warranty that covers the installation and machine. With regard to spare parts, we can turn parts around within 24 hours and have an engineer on-site with the customer repairing, servicing or installing parts from here in the UK. We have our own team of highly skilled engineers as well as the back-up of engineers from the machine tool OEM, if it is ever required.”
“The combination of our own engineers and the engineers from the machine tool vendor, means that we can give our customers full 24 hour support on their machine tools. In addition to that, 90% of the machines we now install are fitted with a tele-diagnostics system that allows us to interrogate the machine remotely. This means that 90% of the time we can ship parts when we receive the phone call from the engineer/operator. This system co-ordinated through the office, means that the spares are ordered and shipped direct to the customer on the same day for an early morning next day delivery. The result of this is that diagnostics pin-point the problem and the parts are ready as soon as the engineer arrives, so that he can effect a repair and get the machine up and running!” concludes Mr Pollard.
All our machine tools are fully supported by a first class spare parts department. From initial contact with our service office, to the delivery at your facility, we are able to keep you fully informed as to when your spare parts order will arrive. This enables KYAL Machine Tools to manage the required service technician resource is available to ensure speedy replacement of the parts, therefore minimising downtime.