All European service activities of ZF for industrial and large gearboxes will now be concentrated in one place
ZF, one of the world’s leading technology providers to the automotive trade, has been busy expanding its operations lately.
The company has opened its first consolidated European service centre in Germany, as well as a new technology centre in India.
The opening of the ZF European Service Center in Witten, Germany proves ZF’s focus on service and customer orientation in the industrial drives business, according to the company.
More than 30,000 gearboxes and 20,000 marine clutches of ZF Industrieantriebe Witten are in use worldwide. Many of them still had been delivered under the renowned brand of Lohmann & Stolterfoht.
ZF credits its “wide product range” for the company being a “leading partner for industrial drive solutions from a single source”.
So, in order to provide its customers with high levels of support in the aftermarket, ZF made the strategic decision to bundle its service activities in Witten.
In combination with the global service network of ZF Group, ZF Industrieantriebe positions itself as global strategic service partner for its customers.
The company supplies products in several markets and for a broad variety of applications, such as:
- mining excavators;
- offshore rigs;
- marine propulsions;
- recycling machinery;
- tunnel boring machines;
- cement mills; and
- ropeways.
The new Service Center will offer ZF customers an extensive service portfolio, including multi-brand repairs. In close collaboration with ZF service hubs all over the world, the global service activities will be coordinated from Witten.
Christoph Kainzbauer, head of ZF’s industrial drives business unit, says: “We attribute great importance to a cooperative partnership with our customers, and this over the whole life cycle of our gearboxes. Because of the broad variety of applications, it is essential to align our service activities flexible and global to our customers’ needs.
“Due to the close links between our Service Center and new business, a great deal of field experience is constantly entering the design of our gearboxes.”
Optimized service strategies – avoiding unnecessary downtime – are the key to reduce operational costs, says ZF.
The company says that in its continuous effort to innovate, ZF anticipates the trend towards digitization, and enables performance optimization of the overall system.
Kainzbauer, says: “Starting from decades of experience in design and manufacturing of high-performance gearboxes for industrial applications, we want to secure productivity by use of modern sensor systems and cloud-based analytics in future.”
