The German company Vega, which focuses on the business of level measurement, has had a presence in the local marketplace for more than 20 years. Initially distributors were used, but in November 1997 the company demonstrated its commitment to Africa through opening a wholly owned subsidiary in Roodepoort.
Alan Wynn, who has been with Vega since 1982, is the Managing Director - and his career is highlighted by starting up new subsidiaries for Vega, the last two successful ventures having been in the UK and North America. Although Vega is now well established in South Africa, Alan believes his job is far from over and the local company is rapidly expanding its operations into the rest of Africa. He intends to personally oversee this period of growth.
From 1997 the staff of Vega Instruments has grown from just Alan and his wife to a complement of 14, with seven officially appointed distributors. While the headquarters remains in Roodepoort the field personnel are located in their areas of responsibility. At the same time the company has expanded sales into many southern African countries including Zambia, Tanzania, Botswana, Namibia, Mauritius and Zimbabwe.
Vega Instruments is also benefiting from the establishment by its parent of global buying agreements with large corporations such as BASF and Dow Chemicals. These corporations have the resources to evaluate products from a number of vendors and then provide their subsidiaries with a shortlist of preferred suppliers. Naturally VEGA is generally found on this list as a level instrumentation supplier and in terms of the agreement they offer competitive pricing that is globally uniform.
Although the turnover of the local business has increased significantly in rand terms, real performance is measured in Euros. Vega has found it difficult to hold prices in the face of a weakening local currency but fortunately its customers have been more interested in value for money and have appreciated the fact that the company still provides unequalled service and support in addition to the latest in technology. Vega is also now starting to see returns on the time invested since 1997 in establishing a solid customer base. Industry has been impressed with the quality of the instrumentation and the fact that it has been engineered to perform effectively, and clients keep coming back for more. In terms of technology of course Vega remains the world leader in radar level measurement. Alan Wynn is comfortable with the fact that the growth of Vega is just right and is not outstripping the capability of maintaining the service levels for which they have become renowned. The R&D department in Germany continuously supplies innovative new products, all of which communicate with all of the popular fieldbus standards. The level measurement market has seen significant growth in the last five years but the emphasis has been on increased sophistication of instrumentation with the market price being driven down, an additional R&D challenge.
The Vega philosophy is one of investing a lot of time and effort into quality training of customers so as to allow them to take ownership of the equipment they purchase. The local company runs extensive training courses that focus on generic level measurement technology, and in what applications the different available technologies would be used. Vega itself offers some nine analogue (continuous) level measurement technologies and a further five suitable for level switching. It has been found through experience that the cause of customer problems is most often the result of the use of an inappropriate technology. The Vega training is geared to providing the customer with the level of knowledge that will allow them to select the right technology for the right application. The choice of instrumentation is up to the customer but more often than not it is Vega.
Over the last 12 months Vega has extensively expanded its range of TDR (time domain reflectometry) instruments to include their use on bulk solids and in the chemical, food & beverage and petrochemical industries. The company has also introduced five new noncontact pulse radar antenna configurations enabling this level technology to address a far wider range of industrial applications. Typical problems now addressed are high temperature, high pressure, corrosion resistance, low dielectric constant material and aseptic applications in the food industry. In addition to this Vega has released a new range of vibrating tuning forks for liquid level switching applications. The new instrumentation offers a much shorter insertion length with working temperatures up to 300ºC at 64 Bar. It is these new product offerings that allow Vega to improve its competitiveness as in the words of Alan Wynn, "In this industry you cannot afford to stand still in terms of technology otherwise you would be out of business inside two years".
The local sales and service personnel are all factory trained. Visiting the parent company also promotes relationships between the people on the ground in South Africa and the specific factory product experts. This turns into a major benefit for the customer as the time taken to resolve problems is minimised through direct interaction between the field engineer and the relevant specialist at Vega. The South African subsidiary is also visited regularly by product specialists from Germany who keep the local staff informed of the latest technology innovations. These specialists are also available when required for customer training seminars, either in-house or at suitable central conference facilities.
With sales into the relatively remote areas of Africa, calibration of level sensors was an ongoing problem. Today technology provides the answer for Vega with remote calibration using GSM modems. The end user connects their level instrumentation through a PC or laptop and the modem through to Vega in Roodepoort where staff commission the customer's device via the computer. This addresses cost of ownership of the instrumentation and addresses the shortage of technical/engineering skills in certain market sectors.
In the opinion of Alan Wynn, the instrumentation market in Africa is buoyant and robust. While Africa is often viewed as a Third World country, it is interesting to note that industry here in general is far further ahead in the implementation of digital fieldbus communication than for example in Europe. South Africa itself has the second largest installed base of profibus equipment after Germany. While a late starter in the implementation of this technology, industry has realised that automation is the way forward in terms of both quality of product and the ability to compete cost-wise in a global marketplace.
Customers frequently ask Alan why Vega does not follow the route of some of its competitors and get involved in the measurement of other process control parameters such as flow, temperature, etc. Alan's answer is quite straightforward. "Vega believes that its strength lies in being a level measurement specialist as this exposes sales and service personnel to all types of applications difficulties. Optimum solutions for such problem tasks often come from experience and a priori knowledge." The focus is therefore on ensuring that what Vega supplies, namely solutions to level measurement, function correctly. Vega will of course always recommend other companies that can provide solutions for other measurement problems and will offer similar quality and performance to its own product line.
For more information: Alan Wynn, Vega Instruments, 011 958 1901, [email protected], www.vega-g.de
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