What do unicorns, vampires, and certified Indramat repair shops have in common? They are mythical; they do not actually exist. The next time someone tells you they are a certified Indramat repair shop, start looking for the garlic.
The tale of the certified Indramat repair shop
We got a call last week from an MRO company buyer wanting an Indramat TDM 3.3 drive. This is an older drive and highly unusual in that it has a special interlocking system not found on the 3.2 units. This is one of the exceptions to Indramat’s normal practice of higher numbers being reverse compatible with lower ones.
A new TDM 3.3 drive runs $11,000, with 10‐12 weeks lead time — and the caller wanted something that day.
No problem for us.
After-hours repair expedite is sub‐24 hour turn, and I tell him if he can get the core to us, we can have it back out to him that evening. At which point things take a mythical turn.
The guy says the unit was judged “unrepairable” by an certified Indramat repair shop. I tell him there is no such thing as unrepairable for a factory repair, and that if he can get the core back we can fix it. He insists that the certified Indramat repair shop says it’s unrepairable.
I tell him that they are lying to him on a couple of levels:
- They are not certified.
- While they may not be able to repair it, we can.
MRO companies (companies that run the parts crib for production companies) are popular. They follow the current trend of replacing employees with contractors, which can sometimes be a cost reduction.
Unfortunately, their motives are not aligned with those of the production company. They want to do low cost repairs/replacements so that they show they are doing a good job of dropping costs. However, they don’t care if the stuff actually works, because getting the product out the door isn’t their primary job.
The caller decided not to have us fix his drive, and that’s where we leave it. I don’t know what the company did for a drive or how long they were (or if they still are) down.
Indramat never certified third party repairs
We had an experience a few years ago with a Fortune 500 company that was down hard. We sent a service engineer rolling with a SUV full of replacement drives to try to get them up.
It didn’t help.
They had blown a couple of drives and shorted out some motors, but had a full machine replacement set in their crib. Unfortunately, the MRO company had used “Bob’s BBQ and Servo Repair Shoppe” to repair them and not one component on the shelf was functional. The motors required complete rebuilds and the company was down hard for a week.
The upshot? The engineer in charge left within 6 months, and the MRO company is still there.
We don’t give advice on plant management, though we have several management firms we refer people to for such needs. However, it is hard to see how the results here addressed the problem. Perhaps that was another myth…
The important take away here for companies that use Indramat systems is that certified Indramat repair shops do not exist. The only repairs that Indramat certifies are the ones performed in their own factory (now Bosch Rexroth).
Contact us online, or call 479-422-0390 for Indramat factory repair or REMAN.