Swinging company

May 22 & 24, 2007

This post is not about beautiful landscapes, but about business advisory and technology. So if you wish to skip this contribution, I can't blame you. Very soon we will start with our Friesland tour and report accordingly...

In Dutch we have a saying: "De beste stuurlui staan aan wal" , free translation in English: "The best skippers are ashore". Such can be taken almost literately, we all have experienced. When one is mooring a ship in utmost concentration, and all the guys on shore advising how to do...

Well, I can do better. "Living on the edge" so inviting a bunch of advisers to spend a day on board for our famous Tante Loes tour. I mean a few colleagues of the Ernst & Young Business Advisory group I am part of... Is it difficult to explain to an advisor that you don't want their advise this time? Hell no - a good advisor knows he/she is only influential but not in charge (though sometimes at the steering wheel). They were very obedient to the skipper... but only when wearing the "Crew-cap".

When arriving in Maurik after our Linge-tour and closing the sea locks, I discovered one of the 2 bolts fixing the diesel filter and hand pump to the engine had been broken again, despite the Maasbracht-Volvo dealer had made special rings to fix this problem (recurring now for the 4th time). And after the "Advisory-tour" the other had broken too.

Before...

In a call with Linssen's Paul Smit next day, we mutually concluded "a root-cause analysis" and a more persistent approach of this problem should precede next repairs.

Within a few hours I received a return call by both Volvo Benelux as well as Rico Moens of the Volvo Penta dealer Monomarine http://www.monomarine.com/ in Heusden (whom Volvo had asked to look after). Volvo acknowledged this to be a quality problem which they had to find a solution for (some other D2-55 engines have same problem), but Rico had already thought about a creative solution.

To his opinion the device had to be fixed to the engine with a flexible mounting - and thought about to do so with so called "swing rubbers", which normally are used in commercial barges to fix electricity cases on-board. It took a few weeks to find the proper dimension rubbers - but the fixing was done within the hour.


After...


Still have to experience whether they hold this time longer than a few weeks - only done a few hours now - but Rico bets a bottle of wine they will stay fixed for the years to come...

Friesland, here we come...