04.02.2016
Big city switch for Gardemann
Gardemann, the German operation of the Lavendon group has announced a new regional ‘Big City’ structure and change of strategy.
The changes, which were communicated to employees yesterday and earlier this morning, involve the decentralisation of the business into seven regions based around a major city. The move implemented by new managing director Dietmar Müller, follows a pilot schemes last year in Stuttgart, Cologne and Frankfurt.
The seven regional ‘Customer Support Centres’ will be almost completely autonomous according to Müller and as a result the move will involve a significant headcount reduction at headquarters in Alpen. However the move will also create new positions at the seven regional headquarters and staff based in Alpen will be encouraged to relocate. Locations are likely to be Hamburg for the North, Alpen for the Ruhr region, Munich for Bavaria, Berlin for the East, Stuttgart for the South, plus Cologne for the Rhine region and Frankfurt and for the central region.
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Dietmar Müller
Alpen will serve as a small ‘holding’ company type of operation, as well as becoming the Customer Support Centre for the Ruhr area. It will also serve as the base for national accounts. The total number of locations – currently 30 – will not change, but each depot will be a satellite of one of the Customer Support Centres.
In addition the fleet/product offering will be broken into two divisions – Truck-mounted lifts and Self-propelled/push around platforms of which there are currently around 3,000 units. These will continue to be based at the current locations, while the 350 odd truck-mounted lifts will only be based at those locations that warrant it. It is possible that the truck-mounted division will only operate out of the big city locations.
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From the start of March all of Gardemann's vehicle mounted lifts will go into the new Truck mounted lift division
"We want to move order processing and support closer to our customers and to massively shorten and streamline communications for them. Gardemann has been very much centrally controlled. Now we want to provide the regions with a long lead so that they can get on with doing what they do best – serving the customer.
"Our second big opportunity is the separation of product lines between road going/vehicle mounts and Industrial equipment. The reason for the separation is that they serve an almost completely different customer base. Most of our customers are either rent either self-propelled lifts or what we call industrial equipment, very very few take both."
The move follows an €18 million investment in new equipment in 2015, which is rapidly pushing down the average age of the fleet to the point where it is now around six years. Gardemann- both before and after it was acquired by Lavendon – typically ran a much older fleet of meticulously maintained machines. There has also been a substantial improvement in boom lift utilisation according to Müller, with over 80 percent not unusual in the better regions.
"The rental business can easily be made too complicated, but actually it's quite a simple business. We see regionalisation as the best strategy for our company. The confidence of the Lavendon group in this strategy is very solid. Plans will be fully implemented during the year, while the new Truck mounted division starting up March first. The regional availability for customers will improve as the local businesses adapt to their customers. The whole point of this change is to be faster and more effective.
My opinion is:
This seems to be another desperate, last slices of salami-step, because it separates from experienced and long-time staff. Anyone who thinks that "consistant" decentralization in such a situation would be the saving rescue is fooled and would have to have excellent and extremely experienced staff around, who know precisely how to handle this risking plan.
"....The rental business can be complicated to make," announced Dietmar Müller,- yes indeed, but those who have just a little idea of the work of platform rental business, they know that "complete regionalization experience" shows a step in the wrong direction.
Gardemann, Lavendon's German business and headquartered in Alpen, was for decades an extremely successful company, until (after the sale to the "parent company" Lavendon) it was started a scare off and sacking of many genius brains of the " Gardemann-man" and managing directors rushed one after the other by the company. Just like Zooom, seemingly lot of money of Lavendon is now beeing brought to Germany; used has this Zooom than ultimately nothing.
Because: Who does not pack the evil at the root, the negative excesses can not prevent. Lavendon never understood that German business of platform rental has to be handled in another way as in UK.
But...now it will be exciting. The industry can look forward, paying attention in any case, there are a few Top-people which are probably still vakant with Top-expertise.