INDUSTRY 4.0 & AUTOMATION WFL’S NEW PLATFORM SERVICE – MYMILLTURN
Above: WFL’s stock-in-trade is large-
capacity mill-turn machines, but its new
M20 (above, right) delivers the same
technology in a smaller package
through to a solution that is then sent to
WFL for quotation and further discussion,
as necessary.
The capability seen as having the most
potential is MyCapaMax, where existing
users can both advertise their WFL mill-turn
machine capabilities and search out WFL
mill-turn machine capacity on which to draw.
This is not, Sundberg underlines, a
marketplace of the type that currently exists
– a simple subcontracting brokerage service
– but instead sees WFL placed within the
conversation to add value, give advice and
help users better exploit their machines.
CUSTOMER CONTACT
Getting closer to its customers was the
central idea in the creation of the platform,
he explains. “We conceived the idea before
the pandemic. We wanted to nd a way to
have closer contact with our customers, and
also to differentiate ourselves from the
competition. After all, we are the inventors
of complete machining; we brought the rst
mill-turn machine to the market some
35 years ago. We wanted a closer
relationship with our users, allowing WFL to
give them added value. That is the
background. And one area that sparked this
idea was capacity sharing myCapaMax,
to help our customers get more work by
offering them the opportunity to offer their
machines, their services and capabilities
through this portal.
“So, this can be
worksharing between
WFL users, of course,
but even more
interesting is if the
complete global market
outside the WFL community can ask for
support when it comes to advanced
manufacturing of parts. We thought this was
something completely new in the business,
not like the existing capacity brokerage
platforms that don’t add any technical value.
“In our case, we are always in between
the capacity buyer and supplier, performing
the matchmaking and also offering support
to both, helping them get optimised results
for their manufacturing challenge. You know,
maybe they need some kind of machine tool
retro t or some speci c tool for this project.
We can offer our expertise to make this
project even more successful for both
parties. That is how we see where we can
add value. And, obviously, we also want to
get something for this, you know, for the
service that we’re offering.
“This probably has the
biggest potential, but it’s
also maybe the most
challenging part, because
it’s so new.”
Gaining a major boost
from the current inability to
travel and receive
‘physical’ training at WFL
HQ in Linz, Austria, is
myAcademy. Such
distance training was
something that previously
was dif cult to convince
customers about; in
current times, this is the
only way. “We never did
that before the pandemic
and people were quite
sceptical about this,
wondering whether it
would work. But we have been forced to try
this and it has worked better than
expected,” the managing director explains.
Such distance training takes in free-ofcharge
webinars, where WFL talks about
speci c topics and shows attendees the sort
of thing that is possible with its technology.
“And hopefully it will lead to a purchase
order at some time for a speci c product or
service that we have,” Sundberg says. Or it
might be an advertised training course on
something like the company’s CrashGuard
Studio software, he adds. “For programming
and simulation software CrashGuard Studio,
we offer basic training that is open for all
customers; it could be a mixed group of
customers, because it’s basic. So, we offer
this type of xed training in blocks, but if
customers have speci c needs and would
like to discuss their own production in more
detail, then we can offer tailor-made training
for a speci c price. We can help customers
for a relatively small amount of money,
helping them increase their capabilities,
myToolFinder is the most
popular service so far,
it mapping to an existing
offl ine service
www.machinery.co.uk | MachineryMagazine | @MachineryTweets | December 2020 25
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