Mechanical seals manufac-turer John Crane launched its super service centre in Springs, on the East Rand, last month

John Crane South Africa GM Aziz Sallie explained at the event that the company decided it was time for an upgrade to be on par with John Crane’s global standard.

“The building was constructed in 1967 and with the upgrade of the facility comes a lot of efficiency gains and improved processes,” he said.

Construction of the super centre started in May last year and was completed last month. Sallie explained that the approval process took place through two capital expenditure (capex) requests that were sent to the John Crane head office, in the US.

“The first capex request was put in a few years ago, when we upgraded the manufacturing facility, where we installed new machinery and tooling, which was the first phase of this project.

“The second phase of the project focused on upgrading the office facility, especially our offices, the building façade and reception area,” he said, adding that the total cost for both phases ranged between R5-million and R6-million.

He noted that the building comprises more than 3000 m2.

“One of the biggest objectives behind the revamp was to improve our service capabilities to our customers. We constantly invest in our staff, facilities and services and at the same time implement advanced processes and procedures that ultimately allow for better and superior customer services,” Sallie said.

John Crane Middle East and Africa MD Stefano Rossi said at the launch, that the company’s 2020 vision included growing the business.
“We are focused on investment in the business to support our growth in infrastructure, which includes developing our machine tools and our global footprint. We also want to develop our information technology systems, which include master data management, customer relationship management and improving our global enterprise resource planning system,” he said.

Rossi added that John Crane also wanted to improve its product development and innovation, and the technical and soft-skills training of staff.

“John Crane has 19 super service centres worldwide and what defines them as super centres is their machining capability. “In the Middle East and Africa region, we have three super centres in Dubai, Saudi Arabia and South Africa,” he said, adding that they were all established to service the base of John Crane products.