The online training portal arose from the
company’s training academy in Germany, an on-site facility, which the company used for training its personnel. The recent pandemic prevented courses being run at the academy and so there was a necessary shift towards distance learning. One of the unexpected ben- efits of this shift in approach is the ability to expand the training offered by the company to its customers as well as its engineering team.
Integrated systems \\\ As environmental testing complexity contin-
ues to increase, especially in technology ap- plications, chambers are becoming more integrated with other systems. I asked Flem- ing what effect such integration has on the company’s service structure. “It’s common to integrate systems now,” he
Future enhancements to climatic chamber specifications can often be achieved with upgrades to existing facilities
According to Weiss Technik, there are also
a large number of Design Environmental-in- stalled chambers still in operation, some of which were supplied a number of years ago. Some operators of such chambers may not be aware that the equipment was originally supplied by Weiss Technik and that the com- pany is best placed and able to provide a pro- fessional service to ensure the equipment continues to run at peak performance.
Application specific \\\ Environmental chambers are increasingly
used across a wide range of industries for de- velopment, testing, product accreditation and other purposes. This diversity drives a flexi- ble approach towards servicing and so Weiss Technik has specialist knowledge of its appli- cations and can support different industries to ensure their specific requirements are met. According to Geto, the pharmaceutical in-
dustry, with its high demand for chambers, is a good example of how different industries have their own specific needs. “Pharma is
highly regulated and we need to take the rel- evant industry regulations into account when putting service and calibration plans together. Even if the chamber is simple, there is a need for performance traceability etc.” he says. Expanding on this Fleming says other indus-
tries have different priorities: “The automotive industry tends to have more technically de- manding requirements and production envi- ronments are heavily focused on maintaining high utilitisation to prevent down-time.” This diversity results in different levels of
service, types of offering and service level agreements and Weiss Technik prides itself on its flexibility in this respect. “There are some self-service elements that
we can support, such as on-site parts avail- ability for user maintenance tasks such as fil- ter changes. We’ve also made our online training portal available to customers, which includes modules on how to use the cham- bers, what is available to them and also how to perform basic diagnostics and mainte- nance,” Fleming tells me.
says. “Large automotive test houses have dy- namometers installed in chambers and there are also specific test systems for emissions or batteries in the automotive industry. “It doesn’t stop there though, the aviation industry also has chambers with vibration ta- bles and solar simulators, they can be quite complex,” he adds. Fleming explains that in such cases, their engineers are involved at all levels of diag- nostics, which can start with a technical help call, which is part of a tiered technical assis- tance infrastructure linked through the sup- port centre in Germany. “As applications become more complex, the need for robust support also increases and Weiss Technik has taken this into account with its recent invest- ment in support infrastructure,” he tells me.
Long term investment \\\ A very important concept that underpins Weiss
Technik’s approach to servicing is that any chamber investment is long term with instal- lations in place often for a decade or more. The automotive and other technology- based industries are constantly pushing the boundaries of what is possible and placing in- creasing demands on its test equipment, in- cluding chambers. Weiss Technik recognises this and future-proofs its chambers where possible. For example, upgrades to its proprietary “Simpati” software are always backwards compatible and they will always discuss up- grade requirements to hardware with the ob- jective of achieving the customer’s goals, regardless of the age of the chamber, without replacing the chamber in a “forklift upgrade”. In this way, Weiss Technik takes the ap-
proach of supplying and maintaining cham- bers that will operate well into the future. THDx
2021 /// Test House Directory Extra \\\ 17
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