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Not every peristaltic pump requirement is straightforward - which makes the applications engineering department one of the key teams at Watson-Marlow. They handle all Watson-Marlow projects, tenders, OEM requests and orders for anything which is not a standard off-the-shelf design; plus all UK Bredel hose pump sales.
"Demand for our services has been growing fast," reports applications engineering manager Toby Frostwick. "We are much more involved in key customer projects, and the number of quotations we tender has increased by nearly 80% over recent months."
The work is complex, varied, and totally customer-focussed. It starts with receiving pump enquiries and advising on equipment selection and installation. A major activity is quotations for systems which must be specially designed to do the job required, without overkill.
A particularly important area is contract negotiation and advice during commissioning.
"We are increasingly developing partnerships with clients in the design and engineering of pump projects," says Toby. "It's very important to our clients, and to us, that we get it right first time."
This growing area of precision work has to flow smoothly, and reach completion as fast as possible - which has meant an ongoing study of all aspects of the department's activities in search of efficiency gains.
Progress so far has been excellent, with quote times for standard products down to two days, and for more complex engineered product enquiries, where a system must be designed from scratch, down to a week.
The complete cycle of engineered product order processing - including parts specification and ordering, bill of materials, factory routings, technical drawings and build specifications - is on its way down towards two days.
Further developments promise even more improvements in this area, particularly in streamlining the production of systems based on non-standard close-coupled pumps, for which demand is rapidly rising.
It's all down to the skilled, dedicated applications engineering team whose overriding target is a satisfied customer.
Back row, left to right: Jason Finn, applications engineer; Jane Green, applications co-ordinator; Andrew Lees, applications engineer. Front row: Toby Frostwick, applications engineering manager; Zoë Craik and Joe Marshall, applications engineers
Contact us on:
UK freephone: 0800 0189440
Telephone: +44 (0) 1326 370370
Fax: +44 (0) 1326 376009
email:
sales@watson-marlow.co.uk
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