An investment in a laser cutting machine isn’t something to be taken lightly. While the technology can directly improve throughput, quality, labor efficiency and overall competitiveness, the price tag can be steep. For most, the return on investment shows up quickly, but there is always that moment after the installation team leaves when the fabricator questions the purchasing decision.
What if it breaks down? What if it doesn’t always produce high-quality parts? What if my maintenance team isn’t ready? I bought the equipment, but now what?
range of service and support developed to ensure customer success.
It’s natural for fabricators to temper their expectations, but for customers working with BLM GROUP, service and support is never an afterthought. To instill customers with the confidence they need to find machine success, the company has invested significant time and resources on a variety of proactive tools and services.
“The goal is to help our customers work proactively instead of reactively to minimize downtime and service technician interventions,” explains Pierluigi Zontini, head of proactive services and analytics at BLM GROUP. “We’re here to support our customers during those times when the machine needs assistance, whether that’s during installation, directly after startup or years down the road.”
Customer guarantees
BLM carries out its commitment to customer service and support in a variety of ways, starting with the basics. Early in the sales process, it’s made clear that the team at BLM is “here and available to respond to customer needs, whatever or whenever they may be,” Zontini says.
“We accomplish that in many different ways, starting with the phone number that’s listed on everything we produce,” he says. “That number, 248-560-0080, is directly tied to our service team where the customer can talk to an actual person for help with troubleshooting or to place a service ticket. That type of access and availability is part of our core belief on service.”
From there, various service levels are available that include preventative maintenance programs for each machine. BLM has developed comprehensive preventative and predictive maintenance programs, including remote support and on-site services. With the help of 90 technicians across the United States and Canada, each specialized by machine type and region, the goal is to be on-site within 24 to 48 hours based on the customer’s location.
BLM also recently developed and launched the BLMportal, a web-based platform that provides customers with actionable machine analytics, service ticket management, spare part ordering and shipment monitoring capabilities. Combined, these efforts result in a series of practical avenues that customers can take if or when they are confronted with any type of downtime that can’t be resolved remotely.
“For newer machines that are connected to BLM’s server, there is a help button right on the machine’s HMI where customers can submit an inquiry, which generates a service ticket,” Zontini explains. “With older machines, customers call into our office to talk to our dedicated service staff. We’re talking about real people – not an automated recording – which is a huge help.”
Customers can also create a service ticket by sending an email to blmservice@blmgroupusa.com, or they can generate a message through the new customer portal. Through the portal, customers select the machine in question, provide the downtime information and create the ticket. The team at BLM reviews the request and contacts the customer for more information, if needed.
“Whether it’s done from the BLM portal, a phone call, an email or the help button on the machine, customers can monitor the process of the service ticket,” Zontini says. “Through the portal, they can see if the ticket is in a queue, if it’s been taken care of or if someone is actively working on it. This gives customers a direct method to understand and monitor what we’re doing. It helps customers avoid those common occurrences of the past where tickets sat idle because the right person didn’t receive the email or the call.”
Dedicated data
Despite the access and availability of BLM’s service staff and technicians, the company’s focus is to maximize customer uptime and machine productivity. In fact, the proactive services and analytics department, which is led by Zontini, was created to minimize or even eliminate the need for customers to ever place a service ticket. The department is tasked with creating a blend of predictive and preventative maintenance strategies for customers to take advantage of.
“Preventative maintenance, to put it simply, is a checklist of certain components to check at certain times,” he explains. “Like a car, you have to change the oil and do a tire rotation when needed. The items on our checklists are all based on experience and specific machine engineering specs.”
Predictive maintenance, on the other hand, is typically an action based on how the machine is reacting to how a customer is using the machine. Certain types of material or applications could lead to more wear on certain components, so every machine can be unique in the type of maintenance it needs.
“Because machines are capable of providing data that can be analyzed, we can provide alarms to highlight specific tasks to avoid, for example,” Zontini says. “This, essentially, is the proactive aspect of maintenance – intervening before any downtime occurs. Instead of being reactive and waiting for something to happen, we’re looking for trends in error alarms to, for example, swap out a component that isn’t bad, but is about to go bad.”
This type of information can now be garnered from a program called BLManalytics that gathers data from customers’ machines connected to BLM’s main server. Actionable information from the data is generated on two different dashboards – one dedicated to the customer and one dedicated to BLM’s service department. Both dashboards can compare machine data month to month, week to week or shift to shift. In doing so, customers can better understand what’s leading up to certain alarms or downtime, and, therefore, avoid them.
“Within the BLM dashboard, our team can reach out to customers to anticipate a dedicated visit for a specific problem and schedule it in advance versus experiencing hard downtime,” Zontini explains. “The BLManalytics platform leads to more maintenance solutions and fine-tuning for customers. It’s a matter of helping customers be successful on their own: taking the analytics, seeing that they’re getting the same error over and over again, and focusing to find a solution.”
Within the customer dashboard, four tabs break out the data in actionable ways. The first tab displays a machine’s uptime and downtime and is then divided into the actual utilization of the machine – whether it’s in manual mode, setup mode or experiencing an alarm. The second focuses on the material or part in production while the third is specific to a machine’s alarms and downtimes, listing the 10 most common alarms and those that create the most downtime. The fourth tab gives customers the ability to compare similar machines to see if one is experiencing more challenges than another.
“Customers can log in, check machine trends like utilization and then dig into that information using specific parameters, such as a certain time frame or operator,” Zontini says. “If a customer wants to see the last week, month or several months of how the machine was running, it can all be seen in one place.
“We’re constantly working to optimize that offering based on customer feedback,” he adds. “We’ve had customers make specific requests to add or remove features, which we’re happy to do. We want to provide a tool that is helpful for the customer. If it’s something that they don’t even look at, it doesn’t make sense to develop it in the first place.”
Strategic connections
In terms of data security, BLM machines are equipped with EWON, a device that is internationally recognized as the safest tool for remote connection. It’s used by governments, banks and highly secure companies. BLM machines are also developed and updated with new safety firmware tools, which Zontini says “are always ahead of the curve, ahead of the next hack.”
Zontini adds, however, that there are more reasons for fabricators to connect their machines beyond the data analytics component. If or when a traditional phone call with the BLM team doesn’t result in a resolution, connecting remotely to the machine itself allows higher access to its controls and the information that can facilitate a resolution. Without these remote connections, remote support capabilities are, therefore, limited.
“Eighty percent of the time, remote support gets a machine up and running in no time,” he says. “And typically, those interactions can take less than an hour. Overall, machine connections provide data for service, internal production improvements and even training.”
Incidentally, remote connections put more control in customers’ hands. Many prefer to handle their own maintenance, and machine connections facilitate things like reminders for maintenance tasks and the frequencies at which they should be handled. If the maintenance team doesn’t have experience with a specific task, BLM can provide full instructions, including helpful videos, photos and diagrams, right at the machine.
“BLM is also testing an advanced support plan where we offer customers a preventative, predictive maintenance visit where maintenance specialists spend time on-site with customer personnel to help them improve their maintenance practices,” Zontini says. “We also added a monthly report with analytics where we monitor and follow up with advice for the customer to be even more productive and independent.”
Not that long ago, it was understood that a fabricator would have to wait for a service tech to show up to help them with a downed machine situation. But today, fabricators have several options to get support and potentially resolve the situation themselves – all possibly within minutes.
“Machine capabilities are growing at a fast rate, but that doesn’t mean that keeping uptime high has to be complicated,” Zontini concludes. “All of the information and support customers need is at their fingertips.”
