Let me start with a story:
A Chinese customer recently woke the GM of a Swiss SME in the Machinery Industry in the middle of the night, shouting at the telephone that the machine they bought from the Swiss Manufacturer was broken and that they were responsible for driving his business into ruins. First thing next morning, the GM ordered his senior Engineer to go to China and solve the problem. It so happens that the Engineer needed a visa, which took him 5 working days including a weekend. The flight and the travel to the factory in the middle of China took another two days of his time so that he arrived finally at the factory 9 days after the famous phone call. Once on spot, it took him 5 minutes to figure out that it was not the machines problem, but a broken fuse that caused the standstill. Needless to say that it took him again 5 days to get back to the headquarters.
This case is not a singular event. Many Swiss and European SME struggle with their After-Sales and Maintenance Services in China. There was, up to now, never a fully satisfying solution: Fly-in Fly-out services are costly, slow and often disproportionate in effort and time involvement of a senior Engineer (as demonstrated by the case above). Local employment of a dedicated person aims in many cases over the top, as the amount of service and maintenance interventions don’t justify a 100% employment.
sim now offers the pragmatic solution many companies were looking for: the ASM Hub, which operates with Swiss Engineers based in Shanghai, that can intervene for and on behalf of you on an hourly basis.
This means, your company immediately can offer your clients ASM Services in China without your own legal structure or big investments, but with many advantages, some of them being:
After talks to a considerable number of SME, GM’s, Service Engineers and also Chinese Customers, we designed and implemented the ASM Hub to serve Swiss and European SME in exactly this service offer. Our Swiss engineers can intervene on your behalf on any service level needed:
Should you encounter the same complexity of the ASM Services and struggle with your maintenance offer in China, then please do get in contact with us, we surely can provide you with an attractive alternative to any Service option you currently have. Please visit either sim’s website, The Competence Center China, the Swiss SME association’s page or contact us under: asmhub@sim.biz