Serving our customers
What is service? It is an age-old idea founded on the notion of helping others and caring for their needs. In manufacturing, it starts with supporting customers when things go wrong. But that is just the beginning. Bühler is transforming its service offering to go broader and deeper, creating true partnerships with customers to help them achieve their goals over the long term.
JANET ANDERSON, LUKAS NAEF
About 2,000 kilometers off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar, lies the island of Mauritius. Palm trees, clear blue water, and a tropical climate are only a few of the perks the island nation benefits from. However, its remote location also means that it has to produce itself as many of the staple foods it needs as possible.
Les Moulins de la Concorde is the only flour mill on the island, has been in operation since 1987, and plays a critical role in supplying staple foods to the island’s 1.2 million inhabitants. Downtime, low efficiency, or even a complete shutdown would have a direct impact on the island’s food supply. Ivan Yardin, head miller of Les Moulins de la Concorde puts it quite simply: “We must run, we have to deliver, and reliability of all the machinery is of utmost importance.”
The machinery that Yardin is referring to is a mix of older and newer generation milling equipment from Bühler. Over the last 30 years, the business relationship has grown into a partnership that focuses on sustainable service solutions. Continuous automation upgrades and connecting the plant to the digital platform Bühler Insights has led to a transparent overview of their processes and production. From yield management through to overall equipment effectiveness, and predictive maintenance information, it all helps to ensure uninterrupted production. With ProPlant, preventive maintenance tasks can be managed online for better efficiency and availability of the equipment. Furthermore, by optimizing processes, the plant now consumes 4% less energy - paving the way to a more sustainable future for Les Moulins de la Concorde.
The partnership between Bühler and the flour mill that the Mauritian people rely on proves that service goes far beyond the delivery of spare parts and call outs. While these are still essential elements, a model of service in which the customer only has contact with the supplier when there is a break down or an emergency is one that fails to exploit the full potential of that relationship.
At Bühler we have always had a different approach to service. We believe firmly that services are a key driver of our customer`s success. That is why we offer a broad service portfolio, starting with spare and wear parts, and inspection and maintenance services, but also including more advanced services like consultancy services for food and feed safety, and equipment upgrades. And now we are taking our services portfolio further.
“Our customers are at the heart of our service culture because we recognize that we are only successful if they are successful,” says Tjark de Vries, Head of Global Customer Services at Bühler. “For us, service means protecting our customers’ investments and enabling them to get the maximum return and profitability throughout the life cycle of their assets.”
Fundamentally, service is about a relationship, and for a relationship to function well, it requires understanding the other’s needs. It means not only providing technical expertise but also listening to each customer’s specific requirements, understanding where their pain points lie and which opportunities they want to pursue.
The key to this is proximity – and this is where Bühler’s global network is a strength. “We are present around the world – we have people where our customers are, at all our service and sales locations,” says de Vries.
The Bühler experts in the field have gained a deep understanding of the pressures that customers face. “Our customers are in the production business. Fundamentally, they are all in the business of producing parts per minute or tons per hour at a certain quality,” says Patrik Meier, Head of Service Offering Portfolio at Bühler. “They want to achieve that quality all the time and with reduced environmental impact. And for food and feed manufacturers, food hygiene is an important requirement. But fundamentally, all our customers want to know how many tons they can produce per hour and how they can get one ton more. If we can help them increase reliability, availability, output per hour, or profits per hour, we are doing our job right.”
To achieve this means not just relying on the classic idea of service but going further – it requires a shift from a reactive model to a proactive approach. This is reflected in the changing nature of customers’ requests. “We have seen growth in inspection and maintenance contracts. In addition, a lot of the work we are doing for our customers now is around plant modernization, where the focus is on helping them improve their existing assets,” says de Vries. “In general, we are seeing more customers sign up for longer term agreements. Customers want to collaborate with us to cover their needs; they want a deeper partnership and a reliable partner.”
At Bühler, the journey toward this services transformation started during the pandemic. “The challenges we and our customers faced brought us closer together,” says Martin Staeger, Program Director Service Transformation at Bühler. “As a result, we set about developing our service portfolio further and reframing it so that customers could clearly see the benefits of each type of service we offer and, on that basis, choose the service or bundle of services that suit them best.”
The Bühler service portfolio is now founded on nine main benefits. They include cost reduction, personnel and machine safety, uptime, capacity, food and feed safety, sustainability, innovation, quality and lifetime extension. “These benefits are weighted differently depending on the type of industry,” says Staeger. “But performance is the number one requirement for all customers.”
Another factor that is growing in importance for many customers is the topic of sustainability. Whether it is led by increasing levels of regulation, or market pull from their own customers, or their own sense of purpose, reducing the environmental impact of production is becoming an important criterion in several industries and regions. Here, again, services provide the key.
"We have over one million machines installed worldwide with more than 25,000 customers, and billions of people cover their basic needs for food and mobility every day with products manufactured using Bühler technology,” says de Vries. “By ensuring that our installed assets in the market run more efficiently, by reducing energy and water use and reducing waste, we and our customers together can make a major contribution to tackling this challenge.”
Services are the biggest lever to achieving this goal. Service provision has always been about reducing downtime, improving efficiency, lowering operational cost, and increasing overall profitability. Now this has become a key part of the way in which we will tackle other challenges as well, as each service has a positive impact on CO2. For example, preventive maintenance and upgrades help keep machines in operation for longer, meaning more value can be obtained out of the existing asset, and digital services help save energy by increasing efficiency.
“As we looked at our services offering, we realized we could do even more – there remained a significant unexploited potential that we could leverage to help our customers meet the growing challenges they face every day. From rising energy costs to increasing safety requirements and sustainability improvements, services can provide solutions covering the entire value chain,” says de Vries.
Bühler’s new framework of service offerings, comprising classical and digital, leverages this potential to benefit our customers. “By offering service bundles, we can integrate engineering, process, and data analytics know-how to optimize the entire line or plant and achieve better business results,” says Staeger. “But this also enables us to address broader business KPIs like enhanced productivity and innovation in a project process that is agile and co-creative. Indeed, the most recent step we have taken involves a complete turnaround of the model for service delivery: Instead of guaranteeing our own performance, we now work closely with our customers to guarantee the outcomes that they define together with us.”
This means that the goal of our services is no longer described in terms of only delivering a properly functioning machine, but rather in terms, for example, of delivering productivity gains. And rather than thinking of terms of helping to optimize business processes, we now think in terms of how we work with our customers to improve their KPIs.
“It is about the benefits – instead of talking to customers about machines or inspections, we talk about results,” says Meier. This change in approach is so fundamental, it is also reflected in the way services are priced: “It means that the payment to Bühler is derived one to one from customer value,” explains Meier.
This represents a revolution in how we think about our business and our relationship with our customers. It brings deeper levels of collaboration. To achieve it requires developing a deeper understanding of our customers’ value chains. It means that we take on part of the risk. We are no longer just a supplier but a partner in the enterprise.
It is also a longer-term approach that drives innovation and creates new business models. This means that the value our customers derive from us grows over time, and it demonstrates that efficiency, sustainability, and better outcomes can all pull in the same direction.
“We are on a journey,” says de Vries. “When we started our service transformation, we envisioned getting even closer to our customers wherever they are located and offering flexible, customized packages to meet their specific needs. However, we realized we can do much more, because we have big assets in terms of our technological know-how and process knowledge used to design and engineer machinery and plant. We want our customers to have access to that knowledge throughout the full life cycle of their assets. Our customers think about operating 365 days a year, and we do too.”
From provider to partner
Without optical filters, many of today’s high-tech applications would not be possible. Since the 1970s optical filters have enabled new and ingenious ways to harness different wavelengths of the electromag-netic spectrum for a wide array of applications. Den-mark-based Delta Optical Thin Film A/S is a key supplier and pioneer in this industry, providing cus-tom designs and manufacturing to their customers. Optical filters and precision optics have also become more widespread in high-volume consumer prod-ucts, which has led to a significant increase in demand. Especially when it comes to medical appli-cations, like cancer diagnostics and Covid-19 tests, where quality is of utmost importance.
To ensure minimum down-time in operations, Delta moved from a reactive to a preventive maintenance plan with Bühler. Now maintenance is metic-ulously planned and executed, based on data driven insights, and performed at the optimal opportunity. Additionally, augmented reality glasses provide Delta with fast remote support that is always avail-able, meaning that a Bühler process expert is always at hand. The finishing touch is the customer portal myBühler. Here Delta can always check which spare and wear parts are needed for which machine and they can be directly ordered online. Parts that are needed on a regular basis can be scheduled and deliveries tracked.
Traditional feed plant goes digital
Herbert Lugitsch und Söhne Ges.mbH is an Austrian family business with long-standing tradition in feed production. Nestled within the rolling hills of the Styrian province, close to Graz, they know their way around feed production and put a strong emphasis on innovation, quality, and regional value chains. For a company that has been active since 1909, staying at the forefront of technology is key. In 2021 these efforts culminated in a modernization project unlike any other. The existing machinery was completely unified within the plant control system. A fully digi-talized production record serves as the basis for future endeavors and service solutions.
Bühler’s lead modernization manager for this project, Adrian Staerkle, was closely involved from the beginning. “We started this project with on-site visits to get a feel for the plant and the machinery in use. Over the course of the project, we would visit many more times and were able to become partners in this endeavor,” he says. Due to the complex nature and historic growth of the plant, extensive preparations were necessary before the modernization could be fulfilled. But the efforts paid off: When everything was ready and the on-site work could begin, it took the automation engineers only 36 hours to bring all 24 production lines back into operation with the new system.
Key to sustainability
To brew beer in its purest form, only four ingredi-ents are needed: barley, hops, water, and yeast. North Carolina based Epiphany Craft Malt has ded-icated itself to producing high quality malt pro-ducts for the brewing industry that are sourced in their region. Collaborating with local farmers and likewise distributing their products to the regional craft beer and distilling scene are the results of their dedication to sustainability. They are mindful of the impact their processes have on the environment and have committed themselves to becoming carbon neutral in their operations and reducing the environ-mental impact of their product as much as possible. No easy task, especially since the drying step of malt production is very energy
intensive. Out of this, a collaboration between Epiphany Malt and the Bühler sustainability team began. Sebastian Wolfrum, owner of Epiphany, is convinced of this approach: “It’s been incredible to have a team that not only understands the malting process, but the entire value chain from our farmer’s fields to the brew catalogue,” he says. To understand which solutions could be implemented to what effect, a sound foundation was needed first. A product im-pact assessment established a baseline and high-lighted the carbon emission hotspots along the value chain. Based on these insights, informed action can now be taken and implemented, such as targeted modernization and digital solutions on the existing equipment.
From provider to co-creator
Investing in a Bühler solution means investing in a partnership. Willi Grüninger AG is a third genera-tion, family-owned milling company from Switzer-land. Situated in the eastern part of Switzerland, they have been a Bühler customer for many decades. A close relationship and collaboration like this is the ideal setting for co-created innovation. Together with Grüninger, Bühler developed the Temperature and Vibration Management (TVM) service, an inte-gral step towards the smart mill. Sensors installed in the roll measure its temperature and vibration during operation. This led to new insights - for example, that
during grinding the product is concentrated in the middle of the roll, causing more wear in this area and an unwanted, uneven temperature increase. This was mechanically solved and now, with a more even product distribution, the grinding process is more efficient, quality has been increased, and energy can be saved. Installing TVM also enhances the digital and automation capabilities of the mill. Essentially, the sensor is a key datapoint that is visualized with Bühler Insights. This allows the operator to take immediate and targeted action if necessary and establishes a new dataset relevant for performance and efficiency reviews.
Th outcome is the service
Caramuru Alimentos has been active in the Brazilian agricultural sector since 1964. Besides being the largest Brazilian-owned soybean processor, they also focus on processing corn, sunflower, and canola into oil and the corresponding side streams. Dedi-cated to sustainability, Caramuru constantly strives to improve its processes and efficiency. In a company this large, with such a wide portfolio and array of processes, defining clear goals and KPIs is the first step. Together with Bühler, with whom the company has been working since 1989, two clear goals were defined in the first phase: to reduce the flake thick-ness variation, which conse-quently helps to achieve the second goal, to reduce the residual oil content in the meal, meaning increased efficiency in soy oil production. The result was that flake thickness variation was reduced by 20 percent and the residual oil content in
the meal reduced by 36 percent. During this time all ser-vice measures and improvements were monitored against these indicators to track the progress on a weekly basis and review it in monthly meetings. The difference to a more traditional service approach is that the desired outcome was defined with clear KPIs at the beginning of the project, and these are linked to contractual obligations. Already qualitative results have been achieved, such as a reduction of overall maintenance costs and higher equipment reliability. After the first phase all KPIs were met, resulting in a more efficient oil extraction process for Caramuru, and the contract was renewed for the next phase. This new business model enables Caramuru and Bühler to align their objectives and deliver true value through services. Furthermore, it is the ideal basis for future collaboration.
Bühler machines installed globally in the plants of more than 25,000 customers
machines cotinuously are enhanced with preventive maintenance agreements
different parts on stock in nine locations
field service engineers on six continents
customers visited by Bühler service technicians every day
countries where Bühler is present
service stations around the world
locations around the world have Application & Training Centers
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