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It was the Thursday before Easter weekend when the situation started. York Repair was working at a large rubber manufacturing company in Grand Rapids, investigating a failure on a 1250hp DC motor. The motor failure would have caused the shutdown of North American Operations in a matter of week, if they were not back up and running. The repair of their motor was a minimum 3 weeks due to the catastrophic failure of the winding's. We were investigating alternate options for locating a used motor we could get delivered and installed. There were no motors readily available for shipment.
As we were brainstorming solutions we remembered there was a motor being returned to our customer on Friday morning that was similar to what the customer needed in size and horsepower. York remembered looking at a motor that had been purchased as a spare that was not dimensionally correct for the intended application. It had been sitting in a warehouse and was not being used due to the incompatibility with the other motors. On a long shot, our customer was contacted to see if they would be open to selling the motor to the customer if it would work for their application. Given the short notice and urgency our customer made the decision to have York pick up the motor for assessment while returning the current recondition. This decision was made on the basis of meeting the following week to sort out details of the transaction or rental agreement. It was a leap of faith by our customer to help another customer out but understanding if the shoe was on the other foot they would hope someone else would return the favor.
At this point it was still a long shot since it had been instorage for over ten years and nobody knew the status or modifications that had been done. Surprisingly upon inspection the motor was very close dimensionally and functionally to what the customer needed. A run test was performed and amazingly passed with flying colors! A monumental undertaking was under way to get the motor installed and running over Easter weekend.The motor was up and running by Tuesday afternoon after the Easter holiday weekend
and no production was delayed to the North American Operations.
The following week a meeting at our customer was set to discuss the how this was going to be handled, the decision was made to rent the unit to the customer instead of selling. Upon return the motor would be fully reconditioned and the necessary modifications would be made to have the motor ready for operation if needed. The customer used the motor for 3 weeks while theirs was repaired. Upon completion of the repair it was returned to them and the motor was picked up for service. All modifications necessary to insure proper installation and operation were made to the motor and covered by the rental fee. There was also a surplus of $10,000. from the rental that was returned to our customer! This is a great example of companies working together to achieve a common goal, minimizing downtime and maintaining profitability. Thank you to Dan Szezcpanski and the rest of the York Team. This was truly a win, win, win for every party involved. Thank you on behalf of York Repair and our customer to make it a success!
