That is what Geurt van Peursem, production manager at Geha Laverman, prefers to shout. Not so long ago, his job was to get ordered wear products from the supply programme produced and delivered as quickly as possible. 'Nowadays, orders increasingly mean a mission. Confection remained, but delivering high-quality custom-made products is our big challenge these days,' Geurt states.
Geurt van Peursum started his career in 1998 at Geha Laverman as a draughtsman/work planner and knows the possibilities the company has to offer in the year 2017 like the back of his hand.
'What's possible with us is getting bigger and more every day. The field service, which tripled in 2014 when Geha and Laverman merged, comes almost daily with the question: 'Can we do that?'' Not infrequently, a team of technical specialists then leaves customer-facing to take a closer look at "that". This often turns out to involve the overhaul or expansion of a unique machine or component. A product you won't actually find in any delivery programme'.
'I am then proud to answer the question positively because I have not only witnessed the growth of the company, I was part of it. In 1998, there were five people on the shop floor today there are 25. Back then, we were thinking about buying a CNC machine, but now there are six CNC machines, and not just small ones. Plus four very large cutting tables. A lot has happened!
'In wear engineering, customisation means much more than measurement work. You often see unbalanced wear and tear, which must be avoided in overhauls. There are also usually significant strokes to be made when it comes to efficiency. The advice then is to opt for an often complex customisation that clearly improves efficiency. Supplying a replica of the part to be replaced would be the obvious choice, but that is beyond our capabilities. Building a wear part that actually functions better and above all longer, i.e. more efficiently, is our mission. It may sound very ambitious, but we don't want satisfied but enthusiastic customers.'
'There are also new customers who have managed to find us with a requirements package that, for us, was unthinkable five years ago. From the offshore industry, orders are coming in for parts with a really thumbs-thick requirements package, and that's leaving price aside.
'Such an order has to be supervised almost on a second-by-second basis, as the entire production process has to be fully mapped out. This in order to not only meet but also guarantee the desired quality. Critical specifications require a different working method. Because SSAB is the supplier of the sheet material, we can always guarantee the specific properties of the raw materials. Regarding the working method, a meticulous logbook is kept. If something goes wrong, which you never hope for, we can always fall back on it.'
'A prime example of strong building with wear technology is the "mission" we received from our Swedish partner Combi Wearparts. Read 'Mega-artificial teeth' in this edition of Hardcopy.' 'In a literal sense, we have been supplying strong steel for half a century, but we have now more than proved that in a figurative sense, we also supply really strong steel when it comes to engineering and construction in wear technology. "No", you won't hear us say or it has to be really extreme!'
