The Service department got started in 1983. Under the leadership of founder Karl Lenhardt of Lenhardt Maschinenbau GmbH, later Bystronic Lenhardt GmbH which Glaston acquired in 2019, the department was set up to provide support for their increasingly popular insulating glass lines.
The idea of creating a Services department sprang from the need to alleviate the workload of the construction team. At that time, customers who experienced problems with their machines or needed spare parts were reaching out directly to their contacts in the company’s construction department.
Glaston
Original services concept lives on
Jürgen Arnold, the first dedicated employee in the Services team, recalls: “We built up our Services organization the way we envisioned it and did everything on our own initiative, relying on our colleagues with long-term experience in assembling and commissioning the machines.”
See also: KAB Allglass from Hamburg: The only ESG manufacturer in Hamburg
Walter Böhm, one of the founding fathers, says that the service concept has remained the same throughout the years: “Although machine technologies have changed tremendously, especially in the area of software, we still provide services to our customers, enabling them to keep their systems running.”
Today, Glaston serves customers all over the world. This was not the case in the early days. The team helped build up the Services functions, setting up spare parts warehouses in some cases, training colleagues in the various countries on insulating glass machinery and sharing the team’s knowledge and experience.
Fast delivery of spare parts to customers
“We built up our entire spare parts stock in such a way that all key spares were available in sufficient quantities so we could deliver quickly,” Jürgen Arnold says.
Finding suitable forwarding agents and transportation companies that could deliver parts quickly to customers was also challenging. Despite this, the Services department received many compliments from customers for the speed of the deliveries.
Glaston
Things were different back in the old days
Walter Böhm remembers the challenges of communicating with customers without mobile phones. “Every Friday by 2 pm, I gave our commercial manager a list of the following week’s installations. Then, we informed our customers using landlines. If we couldn’t contact them on Friday afternoon before the weekend, we would have to try again on Monday while some of our fitters were already on their way to the facilities.”
Also interesting: Three years of the Glaston Upgrade Service for IGU lines
“During times of high work volume, I would drive to the customer’s location myself, service their machines over the weekend – and be back in the office by Monday morning at 7 am,” he continues. “We were young, and that’s just how it was.”
Elmar Volkert recalls how in the late 1980s they were offering the first teleservice and had to transmit programmes via an acoustic coupler and a 56-k modem. “Today’s communication options and online tools have helped us make a quantum leap, making our work much easier and faster.”
