At Your Service and Nightmare Inducing Robots

We have a PASSION for CREATING solutions!

Survey, VFD Selection, Service Statement, and Nightmare Robots

The Ides of March will soon be upon us, but we're certainly hopeful we'll be much more fortunate than Julius Caesar. There are quite a few birthdays this month, so Happy Birthday to all our friends and family celebrating birthdays this March!

We wanted to note and as detailed last month, our first Survey was published in January and the results can be found at the link here - Customer Satisfaction Survey.

This article by Tim Park lists five questions to ask when selecting a variable frequency drive.

These and other great questions can be found in the article and pertain to VFD selection. With over 40 years of experience, we can assist you with the necessary answers.

The link to this article is here Five Questions. For Hegwood Electric assistance, you can Contact Us.

What is Service? How does this affect your company?

Service is a valuable action, deed, or effort performed to satisfy a need and thus is an action of helping or doing something for someone.

Scenario #1 - You've planned the project out carefully and thoroughly went over the checklist a number of times. The personnel are in place, scope of work defined, and all the parts have arrived on time. Friday at quitting time, the power is killed and the team begins the project. Then, at some point in the project (usually after hours and on the weekend), that "something" occurs and you need assistance, fast and now.

Answer - Most shops can build a product to your specifications and ship out, but where are they in the continued support process? If the "something" is a control issue, will your vendor answer the phone or return your call after hours? Do they have the infrastructure and personnel in place to assist on a timely basis? Do they have actual hands-on installation experience? Do they have access to components that will get the job up and running? Where is the Service you're expecting or hoping for? Hegwood Electric has proven time and time again that we are partners with you and will continue supporting our product, which is your product. We've traveled the world to assist our customers and have worked in everything from mines, process plants, and waste water treatment facilities.

Scenario #2 - The projects and the time lines keep piling up. Your coworker has quit and the new engineer is not up to speed yet. You're doing your best on the designs and you email them out for production. You missed something? What happens now?

Answer - How often have you sent a design out for production, the system arrives for startup, and it's incorrect, due to a drawing or BOM issue? Wouldn't it have been much more efficient if the vendor had the knowledge and expertise to let you know there was an issue and to correct that issue? Service is a valuable action to help someone, and that someone is you. We review all the plans that come to us and confirm their viability. We have a detailed Quality Control Process that we follow and every system is powered up for final checks (smoke test!). if and when programming is necessary, we do a step by step Factory Acceptance Test as well.

Scenario #3 - Your customer contacts you and wants to upgrade their control system that was put into service 6 years ago. Where are the prints? What was the BOM? Are there pictures? Where is the software program?

Answer - Sure, the design and sale of the final product may have been yours, but wouldn't it be nice to know your vendor has your back, including a backup of the system drawings, BOM, software, and pictures? With a simple phone call, we can assist you in obtaining the documentation you require, even 10 years ago. At Hegwood, we take "ownership" of our products until the day it's removed from production. This is just one other Service that Hegwood Electric provides.

Hegwood Electric is YOUR Service company.

We simply LOVE technology at Hegwood Electric. Of course being that we're a group of engineers, electricians, and mechanically minded people, we should love technology. As our motto states, "We have a PASSION for CREATING solutions." The systems we build help feed the world, move products, clean air and water, and much more.

As we constantly read and learn, we come across some REALLY, REALLY cool companies. One such company is Boston Dynamics. Their motto is, "Changing Your Idea of What Robots Can Do" and I am totally amazed. These robots aren't your Roomba vacuum cleaners. They are amazing and they will make you think of what the future holds for us. The following are some Youtube videos of robots in action.

Boston Dynamics - All Prototypes

Boston Dynamics - 5 Amazing Robots 2016

Boston Dynamics - "nightmare inducing"

“Pretty soon we'll have robots in our society, you're going to have a lot of automated processes that used to be done by people - this is happening. Society and technology is changing so fast, and the impact of the change on society and technology is global, not local."
― Jose Padilha

Hegwood Newsletter - March 2017