Rethinking customer service - this is the motto under which Unitechnik Systems GmbH will align its own service department in the future. Under the new management of Daniela Kücken, the topic "Predictive Service" is the top priority. Technological competence paired with more than 50 years of experience in the automation and troubleshooting of highly automated production and logistics systems are to proactively prevent malfunctions and failures.
Leadership change at the end of the year: On November 1, 2022, Daniela Kücken took over the management of the service department at Unitechnik. She thus succeeds Hartmut Krüger, who built up the Service department and is now retiring after 36 Unitechnik years. The graduate business engineer for corporate logistics brings with her experience from five years of project management at a general contractor for automated logistics centers as well as know-how from ten years of logistics planning and consulting in German medium-sized companies. She has been working at Unitechnik since April 2021 - initially as deputy department head in IT.
In her position as head of the service department, Daniela Kücken primarily addresses the concept of "predictive service". This is about more than just fixing problems: "In the future, we will focus on preventing malfunctions. Through the experience gained from working with our customers and technology partners, we want to offer solutions and upgrades for existing plants. By taking measures at an early stage, we thus want to eliminate known and age-related malfunction patterns and their causes even before they have a negative impact on ongoing operations," says Kücken. To achieve this, the department is relying on digital concepts and developments in the field of AI. To this end, a large amount of data is collected and analyzed on an ongoing basis. Combined with the experience of past service activities, these are intended to forecast possible malfunctions in the plants. This enables early countermeasures such as repairs or the replacement of parts - but also timely extensions to prevent bottlenecks.
Last but not least, this should strengthen the lifetime partnership approach that Unitechnik pursues. "An automated logistics center or an automated production plant is a long-term investment that is usually made for decades. Our claim is to proactively accompany the customers over the entire service life so that the plant adapts to changing conditions and always has high availability," Kücken sums up.
The service department acts as a personal contact for customers. As a system integrator, Unitechnik looks after its own services as well as those of the contracted plants. This applies to troubleshooting as well as maintenance, spare parts, and expansions.
Service department: Daniela Kücken takes over management
