Walter Multiply: Complexity made easy!

Walter introduced the new service concept under the competence brand Walter Multiply. What's your initial conclusion about Walter Multiply?

Mr. Evertz: My conclusion, and above all the conclusion of our customers, is absolutely positive. The enthusiastic responses on the market show that Walter Multiply has struck a chord with our customers. Customers recognise that they cannot fail to benefit from Walter Multiply and that, thanks to our service offering, they can concentrate fully on their core competencies again. We take care of the rest.

What is the secret to the success of Walter Multiply?

Mr. Evertz: There's no secret to it. Rather, Walter Multiply is the result of decades of experience in the development and manufacture of trendsetting tooling systems with the competence brands Walter, Walter Titex, Walter Prototyp and Walter Valenite.

Today, the customer decides on the best overall package. High quality tools, today as before, are the basic prerequisite for good machining results. But it's just as important to be able to implement the tools as efficiently as possible and incorporate them in existing production processes. This is precisely where the integral concept of Walter Multiply comes into play. For us, as a competence leader in machining, our service portfolio is based not only on innovative tools and our in-depth industry expertise, but also on customer-specific service offerings.

Other tool manufacturers also offer service provision. What sets Walter Multiply apart?

Mr. Evertz: Unlike our competitors, Walter Multiply doesn't only offer selective service provision. Rather, we are the only manufacturer to offer a comprehensive service provision portfolio, in which we take into account and optimise the entire value creation chain. The multi-stage service programme supports our customers in reducing costs and complexity right along the value creation chain. We also offer significantly more than just the total of all individual service modules. Rather, our integrated concept multiplies the success factors. During development of the programme, our close collaboration with our customers was a great help as their direct feedback allowed us to focus more strongly on the requirements for increased efficiency.

Is service provision actually a crucial criterion for customers?

Mr. Evertz: Absolutely! After all, the customer is only concerned with how he can reduce his component costs and thus achieve a high margin for his products. Measured against the costs of the entire component, the share of pure tool costs is relatively low at just four to six percent. This means that only slight savings can be made by reducing the tool costs. By contrast, however, there is much higher potential for savings through improving the overall process chain. Factors such as machine run times, waste minimisation, increasing throughput or more efficient deployment of human resources play a role. With Walter Multiply, we take the entire production process of a component into consideration and not just isolated, individual processing steps. This means we are able to offer our customers saving potentials of 20 to 50 percent and sometimes higher. We deliver optimum processes, enabling our customers to reduce fixed costs year in, year out, and to transform them into variable costs.

What individual processes does Walter cover with Multiply?
Mr. Evertz: Our service concept covers every machining task involved in the manufacture of a component. This begins with the preliminary steps such as procurement and planning, through to the actual production process and culminating in the disposal or reconditioning of the tools. Along this enJade Rasif