Motivated staff = happy customers
In October 2018, NORD DRIVESYSTEMS celebrated its 10-year anniversary in Australia. With more than 3,600 employees globally and first-established in Germany, NORD DRIVESYSTEMS has been delivering innovative, high-quality solutions for more than 50 years in 89 countries.
MD of NORD Australia, Martin Broglia says that on local shores, the team has worked hard over the years to implement sound support structures for its customers and to deliver on customer satisfaction. “Our exponential sales growth has us constantly relooking our structures to ensure that we can meet the demand. Over the past four years (in particular), we have increased our staff numbers by 25% and have added sales support in Queensland, New South Wales and WA, while our head office is still located in Melbourne”.
As a family-owned business, the business is founded on treating its customers, colleagues and partners like family: We are trusted partners. Not just suppliers. This ripples through every region with Martin saying that the company as a whole subscribes to loyalty, long-term stability, trust, shared values, flexibility and motivated employees as its founding principles.
“A lot of our success stems from this. In Australia, it is about creating flexibility for our staff members thanks to flexible working hours and special leave arrangements when needed – especially for those with young families,” says Martin.
This nurtures a thriving and dedicated workforce, and a great atmosphere that customers notice - according to Martin.
NORD’s current top sellers
In terms of its offerings, Martin believes that what differentiates NORD from its competitors is flexibility. “No one customer is the same and we evolve to meet their needs. Customers often need solutions that are not part of our catalogue and we adapt to help solve their problems” he explains.
Martin says that water, intralogistics and food and beverage are the company’s top performing sectors. “For the food & beverage industry, our NSD tupH drive is making its mark as a cheaper alternative to stainless steel and has proven itself over the years. Food contamination is a serious topic and this non-chip, non-flake product adheres perfectly to these stringent standards”.
“For Intralogistics, NORD offers a premium efficiency motor - the IE4 along with decentralised Variable Speed Drives (VSD) which have many options fitted and allows customers to save on time and money during installation. For the water industry, our inline gearbox is very popular due to its robust output bearings to handle axial and radial loads”.
Trends and insights
With the topic of Industry 4.0 still on everyone’s lips, Martin says that NORD is well-versed to offer solutions in-line with Industry 4.0 requirements. “There is no extra hardware needed to enable these features on our VSDs as they are already embedded, can communicate to a higher control and can provide the data needed i.e. virtual sensors type information”.
Martin also notes that cost saving is the name-of-the-game at the moment and that customers are looking to save money and reduce their carbon footprint. “The reduction in cost can be accelerated for companies that have conveyor systems i.e. intralogistics, Food and Beverage etc. Our super premium efficiency motors, IE4, boasts up to 50% energy savings and has become very popular over the years”.
Martin believes that the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies will accelerate rapidly in Australia over the next few years. “The benefits that NORD is seeing overseas cannot be further ignored otherwise we will be left too far behind”.
NORD DRIVESYSTEMS Company background
With more than 3,600 employees, NORD DRIVESYSTEMS has been developing, producing and selling drive technology for over 50 years now and is one of the global leaders of full-service providers in the industry. In addition to standard drives, NORD delivers application-specific concepts and solutions for special requirements such as energy-saving drives or explosion-protected systems. In financial year 2016, annual sales amounted to 560 million Euro. NORD now has subsidiaries and sales partners in 89 countries worldwide. The dense sales and service network guarantees optimal availability, enabling short delivery times and customer-oriented service. NORD produces a very diverse range of gear units for torques of 10 Nm up to over 250 kNm, provides electric motors in the power range of 0.12 kW to 1,000 kW and manufactures frequency inverters and the required power electronics of up to 160 kW. Inverter solutions are available for conventional control cabinet installations as well as for decentralised, fully-integrated drive units.
