This business mode has never been woven in our DNA.
After we have started to cooperate with an international knowledge company to start manufacturing build production lines, it turned out that in high quality plate heat exchangers, leakages and clogging should not be inevitable.
This is of course provided that the design is correct and suitable for the application and the production process is meticulous and at the highest quality and the choice of metals and materials is well-informed and responsible.
But, how to say, doppelt genäht hält besser (double stitch holds better), we nevertheless purchased a large stock of spare parts “just in case”.
This stock lay in our factory for years and years without turning around. We haven’t heard of leakages at all. We are not used to receiving phone calls “Your heat exchanger is leaking! Come here and fix it!”.
Our PHEs have rarely failed, but if there were leakages – it was never as a result of poor quality of gaskets or plates. The same goes for clogging.
About ten years ago, we contacted a consulting firm specializing in building maintenance, gave them a long list of plate heat exchangers that we had supplied to fouled applications two decades before and asked them – go through each and every project and check. Perhaps users are unaware that temperatures and pressures need to be monitored and occasionally there’s a need to open plate heat exchangers to clean and replace gaskets.
The responding to this action was almost nil. Most projects did not require spare parts and cleaning servicing, so much so, that some maintenance managers replied:
“I didn’t even know I have a heat exchanger in our system.” With equipment that does not create problems – there’s no need to mess around with.
Every few years we repeat the same action – sending a list of projects to external experts because we have a “self-interest”.
We are interested in selling spare parts and maintenance, but today it has become a kind of quality control for us.
When the design is right and suitable for the application and the production process is meticulous and at the highest quality and the choice of metals and materials is well-informed and responsible – as this is our utmost guiding principle, it is impossible for us to make a living from selling spare parts and if even so – one has to wait 15-20 years.
Most importantly, we have been preventing our Clients to suffer a huge cost-of-ownership (TCO) blow. After all, the biggest danger is the “gobbling up” of uncontrolled spending, which amounts to numerous millions of NIS over a period of ten years.
We did this by preventing unnecessary cleaning expenses and spare parts, by preventing waste of tens of thousands of NIS per year, as a result of unnecessary increase in water pumping expenses, by preventing a dramatic waste of NIS hundreds of millions per year, as a result of unnecessary increase in the electricity consumption of the central air conditioning system.
When we were just considering getting into plate heat exchangers more than 30 years ago, insiders told us:
“Great! It’s like the printer business! You sell a cheap heat exchanger, a few years later it starts to leak and clog and so you end up selling endless maintenance and spare parts.”