Industrial automation company Festo South Africa has invested more than R10-million in training and sales resources to ensure that customers have greater access to products, services and the extensive sales engineering team.

Festo South Africa business development manager Russell Schwulst tells Engineering News that the company has reinvested R7.5-million to increase its customer-facing sales engineering team by 20% by February next year.

He explains that the significant reinvestment was prompted by customer demand for Festo products and services outstripping the company’s capacity, which has significantly improved with the addition of South African diversified engineering solutions provider Bearing Man Group (BMG) as one of Festo’s latest official distribution partners.

Festo products can now be bought through any of BMG’s stores and 12 of the BMG stores will officially carry Festo stock. The distribution partnership has increased Festo’s local distribution network to 150 outlets and 200 outlets throughout Africa.

Schwulst highlights that all Festo sales personnel receive technical training on all technologies used in the industrial automation value chain to ensure customers receive industry-leading value-add.

Festo South Africa training and consulting business manager Hugo van Niekerk points out that Festo has offered equipment- and solutions-based technical training, known as Festo Didactic, to staff and customers for several years. However, the influx of sales personnel has resulted in the company having to implement innovative methods to ensure it meets in-house and customer training requirements.

Training modules cover topics such as hydraulics, pneumatics, mechatronics, water treatment, process control, robotics, automation, programmable logic controllers, lean production methods and communication training.

“We have a genuine interest in ensuring that people understand how industrial automation technology works and how to apply it properly,” says Schwulst, noting that the training enables Festo sales engineers to offer customers a fit-for-purpose solution, rather than just products.

To address the additional training needs, the company launched a mobile classroom solution in May, called the Eduvan, at the KwaZulu-Natal Industrial Technology Exhibition. Van Niekerk explains that the Eduvan, which marked an investment of more than R3-million, allows for up to 12 people to receive training, using facilities that are identical to those at the company’s branches.

“With the Eduvan, we can take training to customers and, as our distribution network increases, we will need to offer the same training to our distribution partners,” asserts Schwulst, adding that BMG has used the mobile classroom for its Festo training.

“We want to ensure that current and future Festo distributors are well trained and can provide a professional service for customers. [Thus], it is very important to us that our distributors uphold the same level of service that Festo provides,” he concludes.