Cooperative service as an opportunity for small and medium enterprises

Operational maintenance is an issue with the companies of any size and industry are facing. Where working industrially, there arises wear, regular maintenance is required. Large enterprises employ for this purpose usually company private, exclusively for those activities Staff responsible. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs), however, rarely have sufficient human and financial capacity.

In his dissertation presents Prof. Dr. Andreas Weissenbach, course director in mechanical engineering at the Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg Mosbach, using case studies and simulations, a concept for an enterprise-wide maintenance of SMEs. In a pilot project this completely new way of cooperative use of resources will now be put into practice.

"Right here in the rural area, there are many medium-sized companies that would benefit from the form of a joint maintenance," said Weissbach is safe. "After all, the maintenance is increasingly determining the competitiveness of enterprises." Currently, SMEs are either dependent for maintenance or repair work at their industrial facilities to external service provider or the customer service of the machine manufacturer. This is often not only expensive but also involves long waiting times. Weissbach describes in his work an approach to this problem, which indeed seems obvious, but has never been studied in this form: join forces here is the motto. Would companies join forces with low spatial distance and use the resources needed for maintenance together, so the efficiency of each individual could be increased significantly. Weissbach relies not only on the exchange of staff, but also resources such as tools and spare parts need his experience after no any business even hold.

The Verbund concept seems trendsetting: Average 37 percent of maintenance costs could be saved through the cooperation of SMEs. "To make SMEs organizational-structural and financial disadvantage compared to larger companies compensate," explains the professor.

Currently Weissbach is looking for partners to implement the theoretical concept for cooperative maintenance into practice. To participate in this pilot project, companies that are located within a larger industrial area or in a radius of up to 25 kilometers have high operating density are. "For the cooperation, it is largely irrelevant from which industries, companies come and how big they are," said Weissbach.

Source: Mosbach [Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University]