Filtermist increases skills in service department

Telford based industrial air extraction and filtration specialist Filtermist has embarked on an ambitious programme to upskill its maintenance engineers in order to broaden its UK wide service offering and ultimately cut costs for customers.

The company has increased the number of engineers it employs by 200% over the past two years and has plans to recruit additional resources this year, whilst long-standing employee Neil Morgan has been promoted to Senior Engineer to oversee the entire team.

All engineers are currently trained to service Filtermist oil mist filters and extraction equipment made by Filtermist’s sister company Absolent, and a programme to train them to service filters manufactured by the company’s Dustcheck division is being rolled out throughout 2018 with the aim of being up and running by this time next year.

This approach will also be taken at Dustcheck where its engineers will be trained to service Filtermist and Absolent units - enabling Filtermist to deploy its resources wherever required.

UK Sales Manager Matthew Pearson says, “Aftersales support is a hugely significant part of our service offering and is highly valued by many of our customers. As with all machinery, filtration units perform best with regular maintenance and we’ve designed our whole service offering around making life easier for our customers.

“Our engineers are supported by a dedicated back office team which reminds customers when services are due, allocates jobs to engineers and ensures all parts are sent to site to minimise the amount of time engineers need to spend travelling back to our HQ. This means customers can get on with their day to day jobs with minimal interruption and production downtime.”

As well as ensuring units are performing as intended, regular servicing also means they are more likely to pass routine LEV (local exhaust ventilation) tests which CoSHH requires at least once every 14 months.

“On completion of all services, our engineers test the airflow and where possible will cross-reference the result against the desired rate specified when the system was installed,” continues Matthew. “If there are any issues, these will be flagged and the cause can be identified and rectified before the next LEV test is due.”

The skills initiative is part of an ongoing strategy to increase Filtermist’s aftersales department; sales increased by more than 35% between 2016 and 2017 and Filtermist is confident that this trend will continue.

Matthew concludes, “We work with many of the UK’s leading machine tool suppliers to ensure that regular maintenance is an integral part of the service they offer to customers. It’s common sense really – if your car is serviced regularly it performs better and the same is true of extraction units.

“Machine shops will often have numerous types of equipment designed to remove contaminants from different applications – if our engineers can go in and service them all in the same visit this will save the customer time and money.”

Find out more by visiting http://www.filtermist.co.uk/servicing-and-spares/, download a copy of the HSE publication ‘Controlling airborne contaminants at work – a guide to local exhaust ventilation’ for detailed guidance on the required frequency of thorough LEV examinations, or watch this short film to find out why Doosan’s UK distributor, Mills CNC, offers Filtermist servicing as standard.

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