Union Industries has long been the number one name for the best quality and most reliable Industrial Hi-speed Roller Doors with its market leading MATADOOR range and its unique EIGER FREEZER DOOR. How does Union stay on top? Sales Director Alan Hirst explains how its Sales Engineer training programme keeps the company one step ahead. “Naturally Union makes sure its Sales Engineers know everything there is to know about the design, manufacture, features and benefits of the Matadoor range. With this depth of knowledge they are able to confidently recommend to their customers the most effective answer to their door problems and specify a tailor-made high speed door solution that precisely fits the need.
“This is all well and good, but it is not the end of the story. There is no value in a perfectly-designed door if constraints of available space, obstacles or restrictions are discovered on site that makes the door impossible to install!
“To make sure this never happens, Union gives its Sales Engineers practical, hands-on, site-working experience. Each year, all of Union’s Sales Engineers don overalls and join the Fitters to install a door that they have specified and sold to one of their customers.
“What better way for them to learn how and where to improve the information they provide to assist in a smooth and trouble free installation?
“What better way for them to try to mitigate some of the difficulties and awkward working conditions that the installation engineers often encounter?
To make this exercise the most meaningful, the trickiest sites are always chosen.
This year Union has sent its Sales Engineers to the following sites:
Chris Pierce – South West Area reported to Alcoa Howmet, manufacturers of Aerospace Components, where a Bulldoor had to be manoeuvred into the highly sensitive Casting Cell encumbered by a Robot and conveyor systems and be completed during a 24hour window to minimise disruption to production.
Paul Chable – North East Area (pictured) installed a Bulldoor at one of Propser De Mulder’s Animal Rendering Plants.
Gary Bareham – Southern Sales Manager, experienced the practicalities of remotely mounting Control Panels in roof voids when he helped install 2 Bulldoors @ Broad Oak Farm Sausage.
Neil Irwin – North West Area went to his Caterpillar customer to install a large 4100 x 4600 external Ramdoor with windbars, complicated seals and weatherhood.,
Steve Moultrie – Scotland and Ireland installed a Bulldoor with Flashing Beacons and Warning Sounders at Charles Letts and Co., of Diary fame
Alan continues: “Union not only manufacture the door components in its factory in Leeds, but also custom-builds all the fixing bracketry and special seals that are needed for each application using the detailed site survey instructions Unions design department receives from the Sales Engineers.
“This enables ‘fit for purpose’, fully finished and powder coated bespoke fixings and seals to be made, which minimises disruption to the customer during the installation and produces a safely fixed and aesthetically pleasing end product.
“It also prevents the standard, but not ideal, practice of leaving it to the capability of the installers to cobble together fixings and seals as they go along in the blind hope that they will be up to par.
“70 percent of Union’s Matadoor Range of high speed doors are installed in warehouses and factories to replace old and inefficient traditional doors to improve logistics; save on energy consumption by reducing heat loss or maintain hygienic conditions.
“Many sites are old and were not built with high speed doors in mind. They frequently have little or no opportunity for a sound fixing and are further complicated by a myriad of obstructions around the openings where over the years all manner of services, ducting, craneage, conveyor systems and racking have been introduced.
“It takes all the skill and imagination of Union’s Sales Engineers to find ways to shoe-horn its doors into impossibly tight spots and this is where they score by having ‘got back to the tools’ and working alongside the installers to see what will work.
“Our unusual training policy may be a little unorthodox compared with that of other rapid roll door companies, after all not many Sales people would deign to get their hands dirty, not even for the sake of better service to their customers – but this is the Union way and one of the reasons why we are and intend to remain ‘On Top'”.
Visit the website:
www.unionindustries.co.uk
Tel: 0113 244 8393
Comments are closed.