Page 27 - Print21 July-Aug 2018 Magazine

Currie cover story
the right background. Our graduate program has been a great success. We recruit people straight out of university. These are candidates without industry experience, coming to us straight from university or further education. They’ve done a four to five-year degree. We hire them, train them and buddy them up with a senior engineer who takes them on the road and mentors them. So far, we’ve had nineteen people go through our graduate program over the past eight years,” he said.
Training is at the heart of the Currie Care Centre ethos. With an end-to-end portfolio of equipment, it’s vital to keep engineers up
to speed with new releases.
“We’re very proactive about sending our people for training, whether it’s local in our state-of- the-art training centre, Israel, Japan or elsewhere. It’s investing good money in our people to make sure they’ve got the best background and training in the products. We do have specialists but try to keep a broad spread of skills across all equipment.”
Currie Group provides training for its HP Indigo press operators to the highest possible standard and having highly skilled customer operators combined with the remote capabilities of the Care Centre provides a formidable solution for fast diagnosis and the resolution of issues as they arise.
“Overall, it’s a dynamic team,
we have a great mix of experienced engineers who’ve been with us for many years in conjunction with upcoming graduates. We recently held an internal training seminar for our product specialists and team leaders in our Melbourne Training
Centre and after a quick poll we tallied three hundred plus years of Indigo experience in the room... now that’s unique,” said Robinson.
“We are currently expanding, looking to hire talented service personnel in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and New Zealand and I’m always happy to hear from prospective candidates.”
Right people, right place
Providing service to the graphic arts industry has always been a matter of striking the right balance between investment and results. The debate continues as to whether service should be regarded as a profit or cost centre. What’s certain is that without it there would be a lot less value delivered to Currie Group customers. The development of the Currie Care Centre with state of art remote diagnostic tools has gone a long way towards increasing reach without necessarily breaking the budget.
“Ten percent of our service team operate from the Currie Care Centre, this is a team of highly skilled engineers who run diagnostics and work with customers to resolve problems remotely. It helps avoid a site visit resulting in our customers being back in production faster,” said Robinson.
Few organisations in the printing industry have the geographic
spread of Currie Group, with service engineers in every major city throughout Australia & New Zealand.
“Every Currie Group customer has a dedicated primary site engineer who gets to know the press, the
Above: The Currie Care Centre is staffed by experts to solve problems remotely.
Currie Group has one of the largest support teams in the industry.
Opposite: “We provide an unmatched service;” Marcus Robinson, service manager, ANZ.
operator and the workflow. It’s like always getting your car serviced by the same mechanic. When a customer calls in we’ll despatch the primary site engineer and if they’re elsewhere then of course another engineer is sent,” he said.
Robinson believes his operation
is unique in the industry due to its end-to-end service. Currie Group
is the largest independent supplier when it comes to servicing the largest range of equipment. “It’s hard to say who has the largest service organisation. From a helicopter view I believe we’re the largest across the industry in end-to- end service. We have such a plethora of service offerings. We provide an unmatched service,” he said.
There’s no doubt that a lot of
the drive and commitment to
the Currie Care Centre originates from David Currie. At a time when many organisations in the printing industry are cutting back on service numbers, Robinson is grateful for the full support he gets from the boss for his current expansion. It’s a commitment much appreciated.
“David Currie is a great supporter of our service operations; he backs us all the way. I’m sure it’s because of how he started in business.” 21
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