Astra Agricultural Construction Alliance LLC and the KERNEL group of companies have signed a “European”-style service contract – a first for Ukraine – for servicing a fleet of Fendt tractors.
As part of the “Agro-2016” exhibition, a large-scale service contract was signed between Astra Agricultural Construction Alliance LLC and the KERNEL group of companies for servicing a fleet of 20 Fendt tractors.
In the photo (left to right): Volodymyr Savenko – technical director, ASA “Astra”; Peter Pazhytskyi – head of marketing, ASA “Astra”; Volodymyr Merzliuk – chief engineer, KERNEL group of companies; Andrii Pysarenko – director of the service department, ASA “Astra”.
This practice has long been used in Europe: to ensure uninterrupted equipment operation and prompt repairs, farmers sign a contract with dealers that involves a subscription fee.
As Andrii Pysarenko, director of the service department at ASA “Astra“, explained, signing such a contract guarantees the customer priority call-outs, repairs in the shortest possible time, a constant supply of spare parts in stock, and an unlimited number of service and repair visits.
This way of working lets the customer clearly forecast service costs over the course of the year (only spare parts need to be purchased when needed), and reduce the cost of maintaining their own service department. The main advantage of this contract, though, is the increase in the machine’s technical readiness rate, which is critically important for agriculture.
“Under the contract signed with KERNEL, we guarantee maximum equipment downtime of no more than 72 hours. We provide full service and full repairs by certified specialists who are constantly trained and have extensive experience servicing these tractors (we currently service over 500 of them). What’s more, the machine’s complete service history is recorded, which is an additional advantage should the equipment later be resold,” said Andrii Pysarenko.
For the dealer providing the maintenance, such a contract makes it possible to plan work clearly and forecast demand for services and spare parts. What’s more, it is more cost-effective for a service engineer to carry out a quality, and sometimes preventive, repair in one go rather than stretch the service out over several visits.
KERNEL group of companies chief engineer Volodymyr Merzliuk said that the contract provides for a subscription fee for servicing 20 Fendt tractors.
It can already be said that the signed contract is not only the first but also the largest of its kind in Ukraine, and that our country is beginning to actively adopt European principles of doing business and servicing equipment.
