Our STEIGER® are in use all over the world, in Europe, Asia and also in the USA. Alpha Platforms in New York City has been a customer of RUTHMANN Reachmaster, our US branch, for years. The New York rental company has numerous RUTHMANN machines in use, among other things to service wind turbines.
One of the RUTHMANN STEIGER® T 295 A (European designation STEIGER® T 900 HF) experienced a fault at irregular intervals during operation. The local service department was called in to get to the bottom of the problem and rectify it. Unfortunately, this was not successful at first, as the machine worked perfectly from then on and the error could not be reproduced or reoccurred.
The colleague from the service department left again and drove to the next customer. However, he had seen from the machine documentation in the system that the STEIGER® was already equipped with the brand new RUTHMANN Technology Connect (RTC) and that the machine data had long since been recorded online in the cloud on a trial basis.
Acid test for the new RTC system
Back at the factory, he phoned the head of the RTC project in Gescher Hochmoor, Germany, to describe the problem and inquire about the possibilities of the system, which was still in a beta phase at that time.
Replacement part delivery by "airmail"
In order for Alpha Platforms to quickly have a 100% operational truck-mounted working platform available again, and because the defective part was not in stock in the warehouse in the USA, RUTHMANN decided to send a service technician to New York with the spare part.
A few hours later, the required spare part, a relatively small valve, was shipped across the pond to New York.
There, the colleague was picked up at the airport and taken directly to the RUTHMANN STEIGER®, where an employee was already waiting for him with tools.
The rest was routine: the valve is easily accessible on the telescope and could be changed in no time. In the subsequent test run, no further errors occurred either on site or in the RTC log and the machine could be put back into service on the same day.
As the defective component is considered absolutely safe to operate and had not shown any abnormalities in the past, the colleague took it back to the factory in Gescher for further investigation, where it will be thoroughly examined.