For this, we speak to technical specialist Jan van Hattem. He has been with Vandentempel for 21 years, so he knows quite a bit about the ins and outs of the company. Jan tells us about the founding of the company in 1974. Founder Wouter van den Tempel's aim was to represent BAUR Prüf- und Meßtechnik from Austria on the BeNeLux market. He succeeded: in the 1970s, the BAUR name became synonymous with robust quality.
In 1981, a Vandentempel customer, Wim Niesing, took over the company. In the mid-1980s, Vandentempel began to grow and new product groups and manufactures were added to the range. The company now exists 49 years. A big party next year!
Services Vandentempel
Jan says: "We sell new measurement equipment for cable testing and fault localisation, among other things. Think of equipment to measure through cables, diagnose them and determine where the fault is. Of course, this is only part of the network in electrical infrastructure. Vandentempel also has high-quality test and measurement solutions for testing and testing power and distribution transformers, circuit breakers, protection relays and cable connections. This includes low- and medium-voltage networks, as well as high-voltage installations. Even for measuring and monitoring mains voltage quality, energy network companies know where to find us and mains voltage quality is already monitored at many important nodes."
He continues, "In addition, we repair and calibrate measuring equipment from our own manufactures, as well as from other brands. For calibration, we have Fluke MET/CAL calibration software with a dedicated portal for which customers have their own account. Our customers consist of energy companies and installation companies. Think of a TenneT, Liander or Enexis. We do not test ourselves but sell the supplies for e.g. measuring trolleys to find faults in cables. Incidentally, we also sell the measuring trolleys themselves, and we also maintain them. In short: sales, service, and calibration. Quite a few things to plan for!"
A day at Vandentempel
So, from a planning point of view, Jan has quite a challenge. That is why we were very curious to know what a day at Vandentempel looks like for Jan. Funnily enough, how his day turns out is always a surprise. "Currently, my colleagues and I are busy accrediting Vandentempel's calibration laboratory for NEN-EN-ISO/IEC 17025. For new devices for which no calibration procedure yet exists, I write the procedure. For this, I sometimes must test things. Then there are all devices around me. There are specific protocols for testing. I spend a lot of time on that. In addition, colleagues regularly come to my desk with questions; I then help them with technical matters. I am also KAM coordinator. That makes my work interesting, varied, and challenging. Fortunately, the planning part is a lot easier now," Jan laughs.
From Navision to SAP
"Before we started vPlan, we worked with Microsoft Dynamics Navision. Then the switch to SAP Business One was made. We work with Logres for this. Since we needed the ability to assign orders to different people and wanted more insight into our capacity, we looked for good planning software. Logres recommended vPlan because of its ease of use. Together, we created a completely personalised link between SAP and vPlan," says Jan.
SAP and vPlan
This did present a challenge, according to Jan. "Because we wanted to have SAP and vPlan go live at the same time. Fortunately, vPlan thought along with us. We sat down with all parties to see what was possible. In doing so, we naturally already had a list of wishes. And it turned out: everything was possible. Unfortunately, going live at the same time did not work out. But now it is up and running and it saves us a lot of time. And then we are still fine-tuning, so it will get even better, I expect."
Vandentempel's planning wishes
Jan was very precise in his wishes for planning software. His list included the following:
- Add locations to a service request (SA);
- Viewing status changes of an SA between vPlan and SAP back and forth;
- The ability to record hours and insight into this per technician;
- Being able to enter internal comments and problem solutions;
- Adding parts to a customer order.
"In other words: execute an SA from SAP in vPlan. The technician no longer needs to log into SAP to do this. He can use one tool and see exactly his work and details. All updates to an SA must be communicated back and forth directly between vPlan and SAP so that we know when an order is ready. This allows sales to give another indication back to a customer," says Jan.
The order process
Thanks to vPlan and the new link with SAP, the order process runs smoothly and quickly. "Per order, we save a few minutes with scheduling. In an entire day, that saves a lot," Jan says enthusiastically. "Sales takes an order and puts it into SAP with all the necessary info. In vPlan, this order appears in the backlog as a ticket. The service coordinator then schedules it and links the right resource (technician) to it. Furthermore, info is added to the ticket such as the customer's name, location of the equipment, complaint description, problem description, internal announcements, a field for the technician and some statuses are also included."
Jan really likes the cooperation between vPlan and SAP. "The status from SAP is sent to vPlan and vPlan sends an updated status back to SAP. The technician himself can update the status of a service order in vPlan. This way, we know exactly when an order is ready and can give the customer a much more accurate update."
How is vPlan deployed?
Apart from the tickets that come in via the link to SAP, Jan also creates his own tickets. "These manual tickets come from the calibration system. That is quite a list. Previously, that had to be done in SAP and was processed into the administration through a zero invoice. Administratively, that is a lot of work. Now that I schedule it with vPlan, it saves me a lot of time."
About the different views, Jan says the following: "I myself use calendar view, list view, timeline and analysis a lot. Since I got a pop-up about the new functionality personal views, I have been using them gratefully. I have multiple calendar views. It is much clearer, and I have much more control options compared to Navision. We plan by resource and the calendar view is very handy for that. Each technician has his own list of tasks. This way, everyone can see exactly what they are doing, and it is crystal clear to everyone what needs to be done and when. Furthermore, we have set various labels to make orders even clearer. For example, repair, serial number, customer name, order parts, etcetera. For a certain label, the order is automatically linked to the right colleague. Really a godsend," says Jan.
"After all, we are all human, it can always happen that someone forgets something. vPlan helps us with that."
Experience so far
"We have been working with vPlan for quite some time now and it is going well. There are many automations we make use of, which makes planning increasingly faster and more efficient. We are still fine-tuning to get the most out of the planning software. We are regularly called by vPlan to see how things are going. I personally like that a lot. That way we know for sure that we are making good use of the possibilities of vPlan and we also stay well informed about new vPlan developments," says Jan.
Advantages of vPlan for Vandentempel
Besides the fact that vPlan fulfils all Jan's wishes, Jan also notes other advantages. "One of the biggest additional benefits is that technicians get rid of using SAP. They no longer must log into that environment and can do everything in one tool. In vPlan, they can write down everything that has been done on a machine: parts used, part numbers, etcetera. Previously, they had to search for an order in SAP themselves and it took them tig clicks to find a particular order. Then they also had to enter all the information themselves. Besides being extremely time-consuming, this also sometimes went wrong. It was quite error prone. We now let the administration do the data entry in SAP. That way we can immediately check whether it is correct. And it saves the technicians a lot of clicks!", laughs Jan.
"In addition, we find that it just saves a lot of frustrations. Cooperation has improved since the advent of vPlan. We have much better visibility in planning, which gives us a big quality advantage over the customer. We can serve customers better and deliver on time. We make grateful use of all the automations in vPlan. Here, the due date with automatic notification is genuinely nice. This way, when an order is about to run out, a technician immediately receives a notification: watch out! This order must be finished before this date.”
He continues: “The automations save us a lot of time. We no longer have to tell them when something must be finished. We also automatically know what is missing from a particular order. And another big advantage for us is the support vPlan offers us with our accreditation. We want to be accredited, so we need to be able to deliver on time. It is also required to record things. That is where vPlan helps us. In vPlan you can very easily see who has done what. Yes, vPlan really is a godsend for us," Jan concludes.
Jan, thank you for your time and the pleasant conversation!