Flender now has a new face in South Africa. Previously the Mechanical Drives business unit within Siemens Process Industries and Drives, the company in August 2018 became a separate legal entity, Flender Pty Ltd. “We are still a Siemens company, and will continue to collaborate on projects and within the various business units to ensure integrated solutions are offered, whilst using the entrepreneurial freedom given by this change to drive strategies with our customers, providing value for them,” says CEO, Michael Cardoso. “An important aspect of the change is the visibility of the Flender branding and we have used the Electra Mining event as the launch of the Flender company.”
The Flender team at Electra Mining.
Couplings, gear units and service
Cardoso says that the Flender offering has three segments. Firstly, there is a comprehensive range of couplings catering for application requirements up to 10 million Nm torque in various configurations, so they can be adapted to almost any customer need.
Secondly, there is a range of industrial gear units. The FSG range is used to cater for standard applications such as conveyor drives and pump drives. In cases where the application is more complex, these standard units are adapted for customer-specific needs such as mixers and cooling towers. In addition there are specific ranges of planetary (Planurex) and application specific gear units used in specialised and large applications in the steel, mining and sugar industries.
“Thirdly, our aftersales service complements our product offering,” he continues. “We offer all the traditional services, such as repairs in our workshop or on the customer’s site, together with the provision of spare parts and spare gear units. In addition, we can extend our service to engage with our customers on their installed base and assist them in planning their maintenance, thus extending the life of their equipment. Through service contracts we can visit regularly and assess the condition of the gearboxes and proactively plan maintenance.”
Condition monitoring
Cardoso adds that the other focus area for Flender is condition monitoring and this is where digitalisation comes in. “We can assist customers to identify their critical high capital value items and install condition monitoring equipment on these machines,” he explains. “The idea is that you can monitor the equipment on the plant and set it so that it either provides alarms when a problem is identified and eventually shuts off, ensuring no further damage to the equipment. In addition, you can extend this to quite a complex system that can be remotely monitored by specialists who can advise on trends that are picked up by the system. All the options with condition monitoring provide long-term value, in that they minimise downtime for the customer and save a substantial amount of money.
“Our way forward is that we want to supply our customers with new products and services and partner with them so that they understand what is available to them in terms of our technical expertise, monitoring expertise and service expertise,” he concludes.
For more information contact Jennifer Naidoo, Siemens Digital Factory and Process Industries and Drives, +27 11 652 2795, [email protected], www.siemens.co.za
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