Exclusive interview: Karl Oberreiter

It was a significant change within the Plasser&Theurer Group: On January 1, 2022, Deutsche Plasser Bahnbaumaschinen GmbH merged with the Robel Business Unit Service & Customer Service. Plasser Robel Services GmbH (PRS) was created to take care of the maintenance, repair and retrofitting of yellow vehicles and tools. Where does the merger stand some two and a half years later? And how does PRS Managing Director Karl Oberreiter see the future development of the after-sales market? That’s what bahn manager asked him in an interview. Oberreiter also talks about Uptime Service, the new PRS division.

Mr. Oberreiter, PRS was founded almost two and a half years ago. Where does the merger stand today?
I would say it is complete. We have merged processes, operating resources and IT systems, to name just a few areas. We managed that very well.

The business development seems to prove you right. In any case, PRS has grown every year since it was founded.
That’s right, and we are also positive about 2024. Why don’t you give us some figures? In the past financial year, we generated sales of around 72 million euros and were able to report a good result. I think we are heading for a turnover of around 80 million euros this year.

It has to be said that the after-sales market in your sector is in a state of flux. Many of your customers are outsourcing services such as maintenance and repairs again, after having increasingly taken care of them themselves for a long time – this development is probably mainly due to the fact that, in times of a shortage of skilled workers, they are concentrating more on their core business again.
There is something to it, we are also observing this trend. However, we are also well positioned to meet the growing demand. In any case, we are seeing a steady increase in customer satisfaction. Our success therefore also has to do with the quality of the services we deliver.

No more peak times when you have to turn down services requested by customers in your workshops due to overload?
That can still happen. But much less frequently than before. We have also taken far-reaching measures against this, such as creating the new Uptime Service division, which was launched at the same time as PRS.

What is the idea behind Uptime Service?
This is our response to the fact that our business used to be characterized by strong seasonality. This means that many of our customers decided to send machines to our workshops between October and May, i.e. in the colder half of the year, if the work could not be carried out on site or remotely. As a result, we had to turn down orders from time to time during these periods, while our workshops were not always fully utilized in the warmer half of the year. With Uptime Service, we have succeeded in significantly reducing this seasonality.

Basically, you are renting out your machines.
That’s right, our customers can borrow a similar type of machine that they send to our workshop at the same time. The advantage for our customers is that they can carry out their maintenance or servicing work even though their own machine is currently in the workshop.

Why was it decided at the time to merge Deutsche Plasser Bahnbaumaschinen GmbH and the Robel Business Unit Service & Customer Service?
The main reason was to bundle our strengths. In addition, we sometimes competed with each other in tenders, even though we both belonged to the same group of companies. By founding PRS, we have also solved this problem.

But the fact is that PRS still offers after-sales services for both brands – for Robel and for Plasser & Theurer.
That’s right, but for Plasser & Theurer only in Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands. This has evolved historically. Plasser & Theurer processes the rest of the world itself. On the one hand from the service headquarters in Linz, and on the other via the numerous subsidiaries abroad.

PRS, on the other hand, has no subsidiaries abroad. How is your customer service structured?
PRS has three locations in Germany, namely the headquarters in Munich and the workshops in Freilassing. and in Leverkusen / Opladen. We serve our foreign customers either by remote maintenance or by sending an employee to the target area. Or, as is still very common for us, we have a contract with a local service provider who first of all travels to the customer’s premises to look at the problem. If he cannot fix it, we will send one of our employees if remote maintenance does not help.

How high is the proportion of your remote maintenance now?
Compared to on-site support, whether from a service provider or a direct employee, it is still low. But the proportion is growing significantly – a trend that has recently been accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic, which has made travel difficult in some cases. However, we expect the remote maintenance business to grow considerably in the coming years.

But we can assume that the topics of remote maintenance and digitization are closely linked, right?
Definitely. Digitalization is opening up more and more possibilities for remote maintenance. New machines are now only supplied with our Datamatic / Ronnected solution. Internally, we also talk about our machines being equipped with a “digital brain”.

How does this “digital brain” work?
These are mainly sensors that send us a lot of information about the machines, which we can analyze via a dashboard. For example, we learn more about the running time of machines, operating hours or the fill level of oil and other information. Or we can look back and see when and where there were irregularities in the operation of the machine. The possibilities here range all the way to predictive maintenance, because we can also recognize in good time which spare parts need to be replaced and when.

How would you assess remote maintenance at PRS today – is your company just starting out, or are you already well advanced?
I would say that we are still at the beginning, but this does not necessarily have to do with our technical capabilities, but simply with the large number of machines that are in use around the world. Most models are not yet equipped with a digital brain. It will certainly take some time before this changes.

Can all machines be retrofitted with a digital brain?
In principle, yes, although the age of a machine naturally raises the question at some point: Is it still worth it? As a rule of thumb, I would say that all machines up to 20 years old can be retrofitted, although you always have to look at the individual case. However, there are certainly a number of customers who still opt for a retrofit.

What role will VR glasses play for PRS in the future?
VR glasses are an interesting option for advancing remote maintenance. We already use such glasses, and Corona has also given this development a boost for us. However, VR glasses are also of interest to us for training purposes, whether to train our service providers or our customers’ employees directly.

Will remote maintenance one day completely replace on-site servicing?
No, I don’t think so, not least because there is a difference between wanting to rectify one or perhaps several malfunctions and taking a machine largely apart for maintenance or retrofitting. Of course, this is not possible via remote maintenance. But I definitely see it as an interesting addition to conventional processes, which is why PRS will also be expanding the possibilities in future.

You also expanded your range of services around one and a half years ago by investing around one million euros in a testing facility for wheelsets and bogies. What prompted you to do this?
The main reason for this was that we noticed that there was an increasing demand in tenders for bogies and wheelsets to be subjected to appropriate tests. In the meantime, however, we always carry out these tests, not just when they are explicitly requested – and document the results. In this way, we want to offer our customers an additional service.

But is the system working to capacity?
No, our testing facility can also be booked by third parties. Our employees then work on these orders in close cooperation with the clients. We still have room to accept more orders for this testing device, which is located in Freilassing. However, I assume that this division will also grow in the coming years.