Mills CNC Servicing sees successful first year
1 min read
Set up at the tail-end of 2012 to manage and fulfil machine tool service contracts and a new fixed-price service initiative, Mills CNC Servicing reports steady growth over the last eight months.
With 105 customers now on contract (580 machines out in the field currently being serviced by the division), and with over 10 fixed-price service visits now taking place every month, the decision by Mills CNC to separate its contract business from its already established machine tool service operation and to invest in a dedicated team of engineers to manage this work, has been vindicated.
Explains John Roberts, service contracts manager at Mills CNC Servicing: "In the past, service contract fulfilment was the responsibility of our team of regular service engineers.
"However, because this team was also charged with numerous different and often competing priorities, which included the installation of new Doosan machines to customers in the UK and Ireland, and responding to customer issues and emergencies like machine breakdowns, it was proving difficult in practice to devote the required resource to our preventative maintenance contract business. Even a Mills engineer can't be in two different places at the same time."
Originally, the intention was that Mills CNC Servicing would consist of a team of three (a service contracts manager and two newly-recruited service engineers). However, owing to the high demand for Mills Service Contracts, a direct consequence of Mills CNC's growth, two additional service engineers were required.
Now, some eight months down the line, the division is growing again, with the recruitment of a fifth service engineer planned by the end of 2013, and a sixth by the end of the first quarter 2014.
The new servicing resource has taken pressure off the Mills Service Team, removed resource conflicts between servicing and installation, and provides customers with a more flexible and accessible service.
Concludes Mr Roberts: "Because we have the new dedicated servicing resource in place, we can match our servicing engineer availability to our customer's requirements and ensure that servicing visits to customers take place as planned – with no cancellations or delays."
