Customercase: `When we came to a halt one evening just before Valentine’s Day, the problem was solved before midnight’
Back to overview`When we came to a halt one evening just before Valentine’s Day, the problem was solved before midnight’
If you deliver hundreds of thousands of bouquets of cut flowers every day to garden centers and supermarkets throughout Europe, you need to be able to rely on your process. Tessa van der Valk knows that better than anyone. She is a facility coordinator at Green Partners, one of the largest flower processing and bouquet production companies on our continent.
‘At our production location in Honselersdijk we work with no fewer than ten flower processing lines. In the summer months they don’t all run at the same time, which means that we can divert to another line in the event of any disruptions. This is different during peak periods: we continue to operate continuously. We therefore had a problem when a line once stopped just before Valentine’s Day. In the evening, as luck would have it. At those times, good support is essential: the problem was solved before midnight.’
‘Apart from Valentine’s Day, we never really had major disruptions. Often these are minor problems that the service engineers can easily solve. For example, binding is a very precise process, in which an elastic band is wrapped around a bouquet. If that process does not go as it should, we have a backup stock of binders ourselves. The service technicians do not have to come by urgently, but can periodically repair several binders at the same time.’
‘In addition, the service engineers carry out preventive maintenance on our flower lines every year. They do their work, but also take the time to talk to us. We evaluate how the machines have run and together we look at how the service can be further improved.’
