No truck dealership will need reminding that truck operators are an extremely demanding bunch, yet for all the heated telephone calls they are also, on the whole, realists. Most recognise that a truck, as a piece of mechanical engineering, is going to have its share of problems, no matter what badge is on the grille. Exceptions will be made for the occasional breakdown, but the speed of response in getting a vehicle back on the road is an area where there’s less room for forgiveness. That’s why Scania has applied its full might to developing a global parts service focused on providing as rapid a response as possible.

But let’s start at the other end of the chain: What happens should find yourself on the hard shoulder in need of a replacement part? Of course, the first port of call is the Scania Assistance non-stop hotline which will contact the nearest dealer to come to your aid. This emergency roadside repair system is well rehearsed and the support vehicle should be with you or your driver in under an hour.

There will then follow a diagnosis process to identify the problem and, if possible, effect the repair at the roadside. In cases where that cannot be done the vehicle will be recovered to the dealership, which will then set about gathering the parts for the repair.

The first port of call will be the dealer’s own stock, which in most cases will suffice. If there’s no availability, the regional warehouse at Milton Keynes will be called into action to supply the VOR (Vehicle Off Road) part. This itself will put the job on to amber warning. But if the regional warehouse doesn’t have the part, the request is then escalated to Scania’s central warehouse in Opglabbeek, some 100 kilometres east of Brussels.

Customer service centre
The call will arrive at the helpdesk in the customer service centre where it will most likely be handled by Salvi Destino. He’s the dedicated customer service person responsible for the UK market. Salvi will enter the request on the system and the VOR team in the warehouse will spring into action. This is the elite force of the Scania order-pickers who operate with a target to have the parts picked, packed and ready for dispatch within an hour from the time of notification. To keep up the momentum, the parts are then dispatched by courier.

There is of course a cost associated with this express service and it may be that if the dealer is expecting a delivery in the next 24-hours and the repair can wait, then the order is ‘downgraded’ to emergency class. It will then be dispatched with the regular stock replenishment order to the dealer. Of the 70,000 orders delivered to the UK during October 2007, just one percent were in the VOR class, so it is a relatively rare occurrence for this action to be triggered.

The Scania parts enterprise in Belgium works on a 96 percent first time pick rate, slightly more than the 94 percent expected of the UK regional warehouse. While this means parts unavailability isn’t a state of affairs many are used to, the Opglabbeek team have a number of alternative means at their disposal to source elusive items. For instance, if it’s a part for a relatively new truck, the factory supply chain may be able to help out. There is also complete transparency throughout Scania’s parts supply system, which enables items to be found and sourced from dealers in other countries should no immediate alternative exist.

“It’s all part of our focus on minimising downtime – that’s our top priority,” concludes Raf Poets. “We appreciate that vehicle-availability is key to the success of our operators and that, in turn, depends upon the parts support we provide. That’s why we have been investing – and will continue to invest – in a worldwide parts supply chain that’s robust, flexible and second-to-none.”

Scania’s replacement parts operation has been undergoing a major transformation over the past few years. The company recently completed the re-organisation of its parts logistics operation with a major investment in Opglabbeek, from where it distributes all parts required worldwide for the full range of Scania truck, bus, industrial and marine products. Previously this activity was carried out from a facility in Scania’s home town of Södertälje. Now situated on a massive 115,000 square-metre site, the Belgian site has grown substantially since it opened in 1996 – the building alone now covers 64,500 square-metres.

For those who like facts and figures, Scania’s Opglabbeek operation employs some 400 people, has 70,000 part numbers under its roof, has 30 truck in-bound deliveries and 70 truck out-bound dispatches daily and has a target first pick rate of 96 percent.

Over the past ten years Scania has embarked on a major change in the way it distributes parts by centralising the operation at Opglabbeek. The re-organisation has given the company an ordered means of supplying and distributing its components. The Opglabbeek site is, however, approaching its physical limits and with the Scania brand growing throughout the world the demand for parts will, of course, rise. To this end, the company is in the process of purchasing another huge tract of land beside the current site. This will allow for a doubling of capacity, thereby making Scania’s parts business fairly future-proof for the next decade or more.

It’s a mark of the importance Scania puts on the parts and aftermarket business that it sees this as a core activity, developing its own people to perform the logistics function where others may have been tempted to put it out to third-party service providers.

On the tour of the facility during our recent visit to Belgium we were struck by the lack of automation. As you’d expect, Commercial Motor has witnessed plenty of warehouses in our umpteen years in the business and somewhere along the way it usually involves the warehouse manager puffing out his chest to extol the virtues of the latest IT system the company has implemented.

At Opglabbeek things are different: “We’ve witnessed the downside of heavy reliance on automated picking systems,” says Raf Poets, head of customer support at Scania Parts. “When the technology breaks down, as it inevitably does, you are then completely lost. It becomes a major issue for us and our customers when we have to explain that yes we have the goods in stock, but we can’t get at them because the automated system is down.”

Instead Opglabbeek relies on good old-fashioned people power. “With people we get the reliability and the flexibility to grow and develop,” Poets adds. That’s not to say it’s a low-tech operation, far from it – the technology is used to power the operation, rather than execute it.

Opglabbeek is a quiet, Belgian town with few distinguishing features, indeed most people in Belgium have probably never heard of it, never mind elsewhere. However, if you’re running a Scania truck, it’s reassuring to know this grand warehouse in the Flemish countryside is at the heart of your support network should you ever need to call upon its services.