Mechanical Technology October 2015

⎪ Power transmission, bearings, bushes and seals ⎪

Above: Having launched its mill drive offering only three years ago, SEW-Eurodrive has now installed seven of these units locally. It has also recently installed its first girth gear. Left: SEW-Eurodrive’s Nelspruit facility has expanded the range of locally assembled X-series IG gearboxes. Local assembly is less expensive than finished units imported from overseas factories, but more impor- tantly, it offers benefits for local industry and jobs in and around Nelspruit.

Obermeyer informs MechTech . “Going forward, we need to, and want to, become more aggressive. Not in the bullying sense, but by working harder and finding smarter ways of meeting in- dustry’s needs. I still believe that there is business out there, but we have to work harder and smarter to get that business. “Service excellence is the essential element, but in addition, we are removing as many bureaucratic hurdles as pos- sible. We are striving to make it easier for staff to win business and for our cus- tomers to take up business opportunities with us. We have, for example, removed many surcharges on the small variations we used to consider as ‘extra’. If a mine needs a gearbox, then we will strive to deliver and charge for that gearbox, without adding additional charges for small changes or accelerated delivery. All deliveries are urgent in today’s market, so it seems senseless to differentiate between them. “To enable smarter working practices, staff training is key: All of our staff are going benefit from a renewed training focus from HR. We are looking to use our Drive Academy to improve the capacity of our people in areas from computer and software skills to technical com- petence. Ultimately, it is the hard work and smarter capabilities of our staff that will enable SEW to better meet and understand the needs of customers,” Obermeyer concludes. q

better availability, shorter lead times and much quicker deliver times. On the ser- vice side, because parts and skills have been made available, we can repair all of out own product with fast turnarounds. This is most important in the current cli- mate. Components are readily available and we can react proactively to urgent or special requirements.” He also points out the cost and ex- tended economic benefits. “Because of locally sourced content, such as bearings, seals, shafts, couplings, guards, lubri- cants and base-plates, locally assembled IG units are less expensive than finished units imported from one of our overseas factories. We are even able to source oil cooling systems locally, and all of this benefits local industry and jobs in and around Nelspruit,” he argues. “Also, although our currency has weakened significantly in recent times, this may end up being good for exports. We are in communication with other countries, who are interested in taking advantages of our weak Rand, and sev- eral African countries are US$-based, so they can also benefit by importing SEW gearboxes assembled in South Africa,” he adds. SEW-Eurodrive’s IG gearboxes are a modern, modular design, optimised in terms of torques and ratios to use the minimum number of individual gears and components. The casings are reversible, so the same housing is used for horizon-

tal and bevel helical gearboxes as well as vertical shaft mixer-type units. This makes them ideal for local assembly as fewer parts need to be imported. “As well as platinum, mixing applications and the cement industry have been good for us in recent years and our local market share continues to improve,” Obermeyer says. Having introduced its mill drive offer- ing only three years ago, the company has now installed seven of these units locally. It has also recently installed its first girth gear onto the kiln of Mamba Cement in Thabazimbi. To further improve response times and efficiency, SEW-Eurodrive South Africa has streamlined its ordering, quot- ing production and delivery processes. “We have implemented a management system called SLAP – streamlining of logistics and production – to improve our back office efficiency and to switch to push-production. By speeding up pro- duction, we have managed to reduce the stockholding required,” he says. The SLAP system can currently track the progress of an order via five confirmation points, letting customers know, for example, whether the ordered product has left internal sales, is ‘in picking’, on the assembly line, or ready for dispatch. “Ultimately we intend to take the tracking system all the way through to logistics and delivery, so that customers can track delivery progress all the way to the gates of their facilities,”

Mechanical Technology — October 2015

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