Interview with Mr Royer, maintenance engineer and automobile industry supplier

The DV GROUP HOTLINE SUPPORT as seen by an automobile industry supplier

Can you tell us about your Group? What work does your production site carry out?

Fabrice ROYER: Our Group, an independent automobile supplier, produces alternators, batteries for all motor vehicles, spools, plant and electronic ignition systems, as well as other components within the transport field. As for our site, it manufactures butterfly frames (housing whose aim is to regulate the air intake of a positive ignition engine) for the European constructors Fiat, Volkswagen and the BMW motorbike division.

10,000 products come out of our workshops every day. We produce a total of fifty references. To make a butterfly housing, we receive unfinished parts from the foundry which we process in machining centres. Once the part has been transformed, we take it to an automated assembly line.

What is your role, Mr ROYER?

I’m a Maintenance Engineer. My role is to optimise site maintenance thanks to various levers: firstly, I keep an eye on the improvement of preventive measures in order to optimise machine availability. In the case of remedial maintenance, I help my team of technicians through evaluations or putting them in touch with suppliers. I’m also responsible for the supply of stock parts. The common denominator of my tasks is controlling maintenance costs.

You have subscribed to the DV GROUP Support HOTLINE offer. Which arguments convinced you to subscribe to this contract? How does the Support Hotline and remote assistance respond to your needs?

Our machine stock is made up of various generations of Siemens digital controls. Firstly, the DV GROUP Support service allows us to benefit easily and quickly from expertise on our DCs. According to the type of breakdown and the available skill of the technician, we don’t always have the means to reflect correctly and in a trouble-free way about the origin of the fault. The fact of being able to rely on your expertise is an asset for our teams who then have extra support available to back up the diagnosis of the breakdown. Our field of intervention is therefore more targeted.

In addition, bringing in a company from outside sometimes requires a long period of travel and there are few exchanges, while with your remote assistance, our technicians are in direct contact with the DV GROUP experts with whom they can share their knowledge. These exchanges contribute to the upskilling of our colleagues.

You need to know that in our trades, our technicians can’t be masters of everything as we work on digital controls, electric presses, hydraulic jacks, ball screws, high-speed jigs and so on. They are multi-skilled, but they can’t specialise in a single field such as digital controls. We prefer them to be versatile and take advantage of enhanced skill in one field at a very specific time. The SUPPORT HOTLINE service offers us this advanced expertise on digital controls when we need it.

Another important point is the cost. When we take into account the time period, reactivity and diagnosis offered by the Support Hotline, the cost is really very competitive.

For which type of problem have you already called the SUPPORT HOTLINE and in what context?

We have already had recourse to the Support HOTLINE following an internal intervention. An error message appeared on the desk of a CN 840D, but we didn’t know whether it was related to our intervention or not, so we immediately called the dedicated number of the HOTLINE. In under an hour, an expert had called us back and helped to identify the error. The combination of our on-site technician and our DV GROUP contact who, remotely, asked us to widen our research, allowed us to identify the breakdown more quickly.

We also encountered a problem with a measuring rod on a second CN 840D. We didn’t know whether the equipment was faulty or whether the problem came from the rod’s parameters. With the help of your expert, we were able to identify that the error did come from the parameters. We could have spent time assembling and disassembling components in order to try to solve the breakdown, but we took the time to better analyse the problem as we were supported and guided regarding the error messages.

Reactivity, efficiency, exchanges, an attractive cost – the DV GROUP SUPPORT HOTLINE is the answer to our department’s needs!