Doing ourselves a service

If we are to maintain our position as world leaders, we have to make sure to keep delivering top-quality gears as well as a top-notch service to our customers and to ourselves. Indeed, as an organisation, the entire BMT Group is heavily reliant on technical expertise. Nurturing and harbouring that expertise is very important as engineering profiles are very difficult to find in today’s job market. That’s why we have decided to bundle and concentrate our knowledge into an internal service centre: the Global Technology Service Centre (GTSC).

What is it?

The GTSC is a team of 11 people working as a separate entity within the BMT Group and catering to our plants worldwide. They help our colleagues in the following domains: process innovation, continual improvement, technical strategic sourcing, heat treatment, project management and equipment. Furthermore, the team is also currently working on creating a pool of engineers in India. The latter will be deployed to assist our European and Chinese colleagues with recurring tasks that can be completed off-site.

Apart from the topics discussed above, the GTSC will also be called upon as an expertise group. Indeed, in those cases, they will use their know-how to assist the organisation by temporarily replacing management positions or running temporary programmes. An example of this is the current preparations for VCST’s move to a new factory. The GTSC was asked to find and completely equip a new location for the protoshop, which will remain on the old site. The protoshop will be placed under the tutelage of our colleagues at STC and will be equipped with a new electricity grid and facilities for compressed air. Also, the GTSC will be responsible for selling the machinery that doesn’t move to the new VCST plant.

A smooth birth

The idea for an internal service centre was floated in late 2019. The next year saw us stick to a carefully planned schedule, despite the covid-19 pandemic threatening to throw a spanner in the works. The first quarter of 2020 saw us talking to the engineering departments of the BMT Group worldwide. Because of the pandemic, some meetings were held via video conference. In the following months, we established propositions and the decision was taken to give the GTSC the green light. The last few months of 2020 were used to form the actual team and prepare everything to allow the team to work autonomously from 2021 onwards.

To keep moving forth, we have to make sure that we work as efficiently as possible. Forming our Global Technology Service Centre is an important part of doing that. After all, it means we can source materials more effectively and share knowledge of continuous improvement more easily with our colleagues all over the world. Right now, we’re looking forward to seeing the team tackle more challenges in the future and help us all grow. Onwards and upwards!