What makes up your recently launched expanded service team?
We’re focusing on several different services that we’re going to provide right off the bat starting in Q3. These include more expanded offering for new equipment installs, training, and commissioning to make sure our ovens are working as expected right when they’re delivered, also performing temperature uniformity surveys — which is not something we’ve offered in the past — as well as doing install and upgrade kits for existing equipment if a customer doesn’t feel equipped to installing all the new components they may need themselves. There are a lot of different services and a lot of different needs out there that our customers have wanted that we’re looking to now provide.
Why did you feel the need to create an expanded service team?
Service has not really been a part of our core business. We do have a few individuals here who have gone out in the field to help install components and help our customers. It’s all been ad hoc at the request of the customer, and we had been hearing a lot of requests for quotes on having one of our Grieve certified technicians go out and do an install or do an evaluation of equipment or do a full system check out before the customer turns the oven on for the first time. We saw that as a big opportunity where we’re not providing everything our customers need. It seemed like a logical next step for us to not only start that, but to be able to own that. I’ve been in this role about six weeks, and I’ve gotten requests for these services that we hadn’t been able to provide at least every other day or every couple of days. We didn’t have the team yet.
What areas of heat treating needed to be addressed to meet the industry’s evolving needs, and how will your expanded service team tackle those challenges?
Some requests we’ve gotten are for things like annual uniformity surveys or reevaluation of equipment. As the heat-treating usage changes and as our customers get into new fields or start adding heat treating to their processes, there are a lot of requests for making sure that they’re meeting their product specifications. There may be customers that are bringing heat-treating in-house for a process that they’ve not done before or they’ve outsourced in the past. Their product may be beholden to specific requirements of their industry— whether it be medical, semiconductor, gas delivery, those types of operations. The services we will provide will be the kind of ongoing monitoring of the equipment that is becoming more required by the industries that we’re serving.
What do you expect the industry reaction to be when you finally launch it officially?
We’re hoping for a lot of excitement. We’re hoping for a lot of inquiries. We’re going to start with a specific area, we’re going to start small, but I know there’s a lot of demand out there. We’re hoping we get reactions like: “I’ve had this piece of equipment for years on end, and I would like someone to service it, and we want to see what Grieve can offer.” It’s a little like having your car serviced by the dealership vs. the independent auto shop where you expect a different level of service and where you feel a little bit more comfortable with someone who knows that specific equipment. We’ve got years and years of cataloged operation files in terms of how an oven originally performed, as well as replacement parts and a lot of other things that third-tier service providers don’t have, just because we’re the original manufacturer. We have a lot of information to offer in terms of getting speedier service out to our customers, and I think there’s a need for that.
What’s your timetable on expanding the service?
We’re officially going live with this at the start of Q3, and a lot of the time between now and then will be used to build the team, get the resources, and get the product offering ready for market. We’re going to start with the close area of Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Indiana as our first test base, which is where we will offer these services regularly with new oven orders and existing equipment. Then, as we go along and get things perfected in terms of how we’re offering these services, we’re going to expand where we see the need. If we have a lot of requests for this type of service on the East or the West Coast, that would be the next logical step for expansion.
We plan on doing more fact-finding and exploring how much the market wants these services compared to what we can offer so customers are satisfied by what they’re getting.
Is there anything else you’d like to mention that we didn’t talk about?
Our equipment is getting fairly sophisticated. The controls are getting sophisticated, and the customers want full training. They want to start up training on the equipment, know how to run it, how to run the controls, and how to run the programs. That’s why this need is developed, and we’ve expanded this department to meet those needs.
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