Dear Mr. Gielissen,
Thanks for your concern and reply.
I am happy to communicate in this public platform with you and of the reach this platform has. More happy I am, about the seriousness as an organisation Netherlocks is of the market reach and basic problems some customers had faced.
I am sure the group members will also be happy to know of Netherlocks position and seriousness it has with its existing and potential new customers.
I am also sure you know me as the same Kannan Sundaram from Munich and we had met each other sometime back.
I never had the doubt about the product or the improvements and innovation happening in your product range. And of the reliability of Netherlock products in the long run having seen your product at few plants, I had been. I am aware of those client's satisfaction and long term relation they have with Netherlocks. Infact the name Netherlocks has become a synonym of mechanical interlocking to many in the industry.
The fundamental issue of concern is the response time for certain technical clarification on your products and solutions. As you know some companies who does small process or utility units may not have significant requirements of mechanical interlocking devices and some companies who have significant requirement but are more cost concerned. These are known to the suppliers and more specifically the local trading partners and they have a practice in not responding or slow in response, similar to the situation faced by one of the member who raised the question with Netherlocks. And to me during my handling of LNG terminal, Hazira, Gujarat project.(A Shell company). And others who had other different experiences.
Unfortunately some engg. companies do not have a comprehensive company standards and designers go by thier understanding of the product. This kind of platform helps people share thier personal experience and the understanding of the product. Personally I feel a company confident of having the best product should also help in having the product understood in the industry utilising the oppurtunity of people seeking advices or who may ask the very basic questions, irrespective of having the potential of recieving the order and the more Netherlock will dominate the market having the first opinion as the best opinion in the young minds who may lead a project someday. I do agree your website give quit exhaustive details but still open question does exist always. I have seen process engineers and safety engineers who are not aware of the sophistication and complexities possible with the mechanical interlocking, who are supposed to be the originators of such requirements.
In conclusion I suggest Netherlocks should lay down rules to its local partners in their way of approach to the local customer base. And you could possibly have a blog opened similar to the way the Microsoft or HP's IPAQ choice have independant websites for each product and they clarify the simplest questions and discuss things out of the manuals and reference materials of the product itself. May be that could help Netherlocks to have a direct contact for plethora of new ideas and to have an insight of situations at site and at engineering office, especially from the process/safety engineers, helping to understand the other side of the world apart from the feedback from your service engineers at site, having said the channel of communication is also long due to the multi-tier protocol in certain companies, in overall can bridge the gap for mutual benifit and override the word of mouth views of the company.
Lastly, to start with, I did develop an alternative design solution avoiding the one and the only spring in your MRL series. Similar to the key hole closing pre-stressed metal plate can be used as the typical position of the valves in the plant makes it more prone to collection of sand particles in the crevice area. The location of the spring currently is in the corner, when the sand accumulates, the spring functioning is more likely to be obstructed. Using the pre-stressed plate the area is cleared off and lever piece can slide on the coated stem freely hanging on the metal plate. The sliding movement can clear off any sand. The plate can be located and oriented to ensure there is even erosion of the stem coating. Refer the attached sketch. Hope this reduces the cost and simplifying the device.
Your team could evaluate that and let us know of Netherlock's feedback of it.
Thanks again for this interaction and helping the group members to know the interest and concern of Netherlock towards its customers.
The above views are of my own and do not reflect the opinion of the organisation I work for or have worked for.
Kind Regards,
Kannan.
From: Frank Gielissen <FGielissen@netherlocks.com>
To: "kannan_cit@yahoo.com" <kannan_cit@yahoo.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2008 12:24:36 PM
Subject: Netherlocks information
Dear Mr. Kannan,
I saw some correspondence on the piping and valve information Blog from last August regarding Interlocking.
Firstly you are quite well informed on the subject, have you worked with our company in the past?
I see you are located in Germany, are you still working there and for what company may I ask.
I am sorry to see your experience with Netherlocks is not that positive since you mention we only reply for big orders, I would like to emphasize we are always looking to assist companies were possible, actually we are known for our good relation with clients and custom made solutions.
SoI hope we can be of assistance in the future, even on small projects and if you would like to get in touch with any of our sales people for an update on our products I would be happy to introduce you.
I look forward to hear from you.
Kind regards,
Frank Gielissen
Sales Director
NETHERLOCKS
