Komatsu New Zealand has appointed Phil Morrell to the newly created position of National Service Manager, with the aim of expanding the company’s uptake and range of aftermarket solutions.
Reporting directly to Komatsu NZ Managing Director Phil Pritchard, Morrell will work closely with Barry Millar, Komatsu NZ’s National Aftermarket Manager.
Morrell has spent the past 10 years working in aftermarket management and service delivery for a number of leading companies in the mining, industrial and energy sectors, both in New Zealand and internationally.
His roles included setting up aftermarket systems for service technicians in the field, and developing back-end value-added capabilities to ensure the highest levels of support for customers.
“The modern aftermarket business is all about enabling technicians and management to be able to use systems to their maximum capability, and contribute to driving growth for the business,” said Morrell.
“From the customer point of view, it’s all about keeping them constantly informed of the condition of their equipment, enabling them to better budget for their medium and long-term operations, and not have plant out of operation at critical times due to unplanned downtime.
“To achieve this, it’s essential to have the systems in place that allow us to better communicate with customers on what actions they need to take, and to work with them on budgeting for service and maintenance, with the overall aim of reducing the lifetime costs of a machine, and increasing the availability of the product,” he said.
“With Komatsu, we – and our customers – are very fortunate in having the capabilities built into our KOMTRAX remote monitoring system. And we have some very smart and advanced technology coming down the line.
“KOMTRAX gives us access to huge amounts of ‘live’ data coming from each machine, and we can compare this data with what we know already about machine service histories and component lives, which in turn gives us a far more accurate picture of what’s happening, and what’s likely to be coming up,” Morrell said.
“It’s my job to make sure our service technicians are able to make the best use of these existing and emerging technologies, and apply them to the benefit of our customers.
“I’ll be very much focused on opportunities to grow our aftermarket business, by developing and growing our technical capabilities throughout New Zealand,” he said.