Quick-response team

When there is a power outage or your systems go down, Hager experts are on the scene

Hager quick-response team vehicle:

At your service

Failure of a single electrical component can bring an entire building to a standstill. It also causes production to grind to a halt and every hour of downtime results in heavy costs. Hager is quick to mobilise in these circumstances, and the Hager quick-response team and the vehicle are there in no time to provide professional assistance.

2016
40
troubleshooting visits

When the quick-response team receives an emergency call, it sets into motion a meticulously planned workflow. “Just like a well-oiled machine,” comments Andreas Frevel, Application and Solution Manager. He talks in the calm convincing tone of a man whose job consists of tackling crisis situations with a cool head. “Even in the most urgent of cases, we always remain calm and collected.” After all, when you’re dealing with running machinery that is under strain you shouldn’t be working under strain yourself, or as Andreas Frevel puts it, “…it’s totally the wrong place for a hectic atmosphere.” When, for instance, employees at a combined heat and power factory in Braunschweig called Hager at its Blieskastel site in a state of agitation to report that their electrical system had gone down, the experts in the quick-response team already had an idea of the problem. “It’s a bit like being an emergency doctor. When an incident is reported, we ask a number of initial questions when we’re on the phone and from this we already get a good idea of what the problem might be.” Then it’s all about haste. The quick-response team vehicle is loaded up and the team rushes to the customer’s aid in Braunschweig.

Mathias Ziegler and his colleague Alexander Dutchman from the Hager quick-response team at work.
Workshop on wheels

It says Application and Solution Manager on Andreas Frevel’s business card. He has decades of experience in resolving technical problems. Based on this experience, he developed the quick-response team service together with Karl-Heinz Huwer from the Commercial Competence Center and Rémy Becher, Senior Vice President Offer Management Commercial. Andreas set up the team and has been coordinating its activities ever since. When the team shows up at the customer’s premises in the imposing vehicle, it makes quite an impression on people. “It’s like we’re parking a complete workshop and a state-of-the-art, fully equipped analysis lab right in front of their door. It gives a very professional first impression.”

The specialists carry with them some highly accurate megohmmeters, thermographs and various displays. Some of these devices cost over 20,000 euros. The team members are some of the best in their fields and have been specially trained to work under pressure. “We always receive a very friendly welcome when we arrive on the scene,” says Andreas Frevel’s colleague Mathias Ziegler adding, “and normally an even friendlier goodbye.” So far we’ve been able to resolve every emergency and have spared customers lengthy downtimes. This is hard cash to them.

At the combined heat and power plant in Braunschweig, Mathias Ziegler already suspected from talking to the customer over the phone that the error was likely to be confined to just the incoming feeder panel. The ‘just’ in this case refers to a cable outlet measuring a few square metres, peppered with countless input fuses. “It’s the beating heart of the entire electrical installation that keeps the building running,” says Mathias Ziegler, who is in charge of this particular job. Only now, nothing at all is working and a combined heat and power plant that is not running has a huge financial impact every day it is down.

The boss of the small power plant is understandably on edge. While Mathias Ziegler tries to cheer him up and put his mind at ease; this is also part and parcel of the emergency professionals’ job, other colleagues are already purposefully examining the circuit breaker on the incoming feeder panel. This quickly confirms their suspicions and Mathias was spot on with his educated guess. Dust deposits had accumulated in the mechanism and the various switching operations were damaging the component. The component is removed and taken back to Blieskastel for a closer inspection.

Mobile, customised measuring and testing station.
ACB open circuit breaker 800 – 4,000 A.
Mobile PC workstation with online access.
Space for service teams of up to three people.
Does around 20,000 service kilometres a year.
Dispatched to provide assistance with commissioning, grid analysis and breakdowns.
Loss of power to heart-lung machines

Even customers whose electrical systems are manufactured by a competitor rather than by Hager are now also requesting the services of the quick-response team. This was the case, for example, when the service team was called to the University Hospital of Marburg. During a test for a power outage simulation, the emergency power generators had not come on. In hospitals, this needs to happen within 15 seconds at most. Any longer could put the lives of patients on a cardiopulmonary bypass pump (a heart-lung machine), at risk. TÜV (a German certification body) gave the hospital a deadline of two weeks to rectify this dangerous fault.

The hospital was already planning to contract Hager to perform a full service of power distribution at the site, and now the situation had become critical with the need of rapid assistance. “We actually identified an error with the original system. There was a problem with the level control,” clarifies Andreas Frevel.

Once the error had been identified, the problem was quick to resolve and the hospital administrators were relieved. Hager is now servicing all electrical systems at the hospital. Andreas Frevel thinks for a moment, and then says, “…we’re here for our customers in an emergency and this is highly appreciated. When everything is running smoothly, it is easy to be friends with anyone. Only when you’re in hot water and need some help do you find out who you can really count on.’

One-stop shop for emergency services and maintenance

This reliable emergency response record is now enabling Hager to broker complex service and maintenance contracts with major customers. “Increasing numbers of customers also want to procure this type of service for large-scale systems from a single source. This involves a set of contractual regulations in which we guarantee our customers that we will provide on-site support within a certain time if there is an incident and supply replacement parts.”

Hager has a maintenance and repair contract like this for the complex electronics systems that run the DESY particle accelerator at the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres in Hamburg. This contract also stipulates that an extensive range of replacement parts needs to be held permanently in reserve to be able to replace faulty components as quickly as possible if they become damaged.

The customer was notified that this would also be necessary for the circuit breaker at the combined heat and power plant in Braunschweig the very morning after the quick-response team vehicle visited the site. At 7:30 on the dot, the defective component was analysed in the lab back in Blieskastel. By 10 a.m. the power plant operator had placed the corresponding order for a new circuit breaker. A little while later, the quick-response team is already on its way back to Braunschweig to install the new component. The time from the emergency call to the resolution of the problem was just three days.

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