Visiting South Africa, and in fact the African continent for the very first time, Oliver Ronshausen, Service Manager from MA Lighting, presented an elaborate three-day Advanced Service Training session to the DWR Distribution technical and support team.
Oliver joined MA in 1994, and with only a four-year interruption in between, really is part of the family. “I love the MA team, the product, being around the users and distributors and making friends in the industry,” said Oliver who in August last year started pushing service training to new and more structured level. “The training is to educate and enable people in the field to do repairs but the important thing, really, is maintenance. The feeling I have is that many MA owners don’t realise that they have to maintain their consoles in order to operate shows with a reliable product.”
The complex course went right down to component level and included fault-finding, quick fixes, replacing parts, PC boards, screens and a wealth of other information. “We have learnt a great deal and our sincere thanks to Oliver,” said Bruce Riley, head of the DWR Technical department. “Our knowledge on tips and tricks and prompt problem solving has increased. We have learnt about support, how to listen to problems over the phone and how to swiftly get to the bottom of issues.”
An added benefit was that the entire DWR technical team, from Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, received the same training at the same time. “That was the beauty of it all,” added Bruce. “On many occasions, it’s one person going overseas and then coming back to share what they have learnt. This time everyone was trained on the same level and it makes life so much better and easier. It also makes the DWR team that much stronger on support.”
Technician Tyler Pugin believes the training will definitely help him in the future. His colleague, Nick Barnes agrees. “We feel like rocket scientists now” said Nick. “The nice thing is that you are learning from MA who have dealt with problems from all over the world and how to fix them. Oliver has preempted us on what to look out for.”
Referring to the DWR team as ‘seasoned technicians’, Oliver said that while technicians were all familiar with how things worked, it was the little things that switched on the light bulb.
And the light did go on, even for experienced DWR Workshop Manager Derek Kruger. “There have been a couple of short tips I’ve learnt over this time,” he said. “Button presses to actually shortcut something. That has helped and it was something I didn’t know which is nice. The session really was beneficial for me.”
