It is a wet and cold Friday evening somewhere in Sweden. The late shift is already looking forward to calling it a day when it happens. The machine stands still. It quickly turns out that a collision of the spindle and the workpiece must be the reason. However, the operator, an experienced man, reacts quickly and makes an emergency call to HELLER. In case of an emergency or if regular maintenance is due somewhere around the globe, the team of HELLER Service does whatever it can. Also on that freezing Friday evening last winter. The protocol of a successful rescue mission.

TEXT Lukas Schult IMAGES Sebastian Grenzing, robh/iStock, www.devlomedia.com/GettyImages

Friday evening,

19:56 hours

at HELLER Services in Nürtingen

The telephone rings, but instead of picking up the receiver, Jürgen Stolz only has to fold down the microphone on his headset to answer the call. The HELLER service expert is the man of the hour. As a so-called Hotliner, he immediately answers emergency calls. He is talking to the Swedish customer on the phone, letting him explain how it came to the serious collision between the tool and the spindle. To make it easier for him to understand what happened and to see if a program error might be the cause, he simulates the incident on an identical machine control at the HELLER simulation room.

Together with Bernd Gruber, Head of Global Spare Parts Logistics, he works out the best possible approach. It quickly becomes obvious that the spindle needs to be replaced, and that as quickly as possible. The part needs to be shipped this very evening. “We are able to send out spare parts until late in the evening. This is one of the unique selling points of HELLER Service,” Gruber explains, who has worked at the company for 31 years.

Friday evening,

20:17 hours

at the HELLER ­Logistics Centre
in Nürtingen

Shortly after receiving the emergency call from Sweden, staff at the HELLER Logistics Centre – only a stone’s throw from the main plant – is already preparing the requested new spindle for dispatch using a high rack stacker. As conventional express service providers are no longer available at this time of the day, a specially ordered courier driver is already on his way to the Logistics Centre.

Only a few minutes pass before the spare part can be loaded into the courier vehicle to be transported to the ferry port in Puttgarden on the island of Fehmarn by the most direct route from where it will be transported to the Swedish customer through Denmark.

Saturday morning,

05:30 hours

island of Fehmarn

Overnight, the courier driver has travelled 800 kilometres in more than 8 hours in order to reach the ferry terminal on the island of Fehmarn on time. From the Danish town of Rødby he will take another eight hours before he and his valuable freight arrive at the customer’s factory gates. Everything is going according to plan. Already early on Saturday evening, the courier driver unloads the spare part at customer site and is ready to return home.

Monday morning,

07:30 hours

somewhere
in Sweden

Now, Markus Lindblad comes into play. HELLER’s Swedish service engineer heads straight off to the customer. Due to the courier driver’s excellent job Lindblad is able to start work on the machine immediately upon his arrival and will replace the spindle within a short time. This is service made by HELLER: quick, reliable and, above all, competent and personal.