Beer, the brewery and not the town is the maker of Sam Adams family of beers. It is located just outside Allentown, PA at the site of an old Stroh brewery. A few weeks ago, the purchased some of my equipment and called yesterday to say that they were having problems with my equipment. This just after I was there last week and there were no problems then.
So I make flight reservations yesterday to fly into Philly, then drive to Allentown for a 7:30 AM meeting at the brewery. With storms in Philly delaying all arrivals and departures, my plane gets in after midnight and I drive the hour plus to the hotel.
We (my local Rep and I) get there and the person that we were to see had not told security that we were to arrive. It takes nearly an hour for "security" to reach our contact, and we are escorted into the facility. We get to my equipment and it is not running, so we stand and talk; stand and talk; stand and talk some more.
About 10:45AM they are just about to use the equipment, an aid to filtering the suspended solids out of their product. About 11:15, my pumps start up and work great for about 20 minutes, and then a loud hissing sound just before liquid starts shooting out of inappropriate places.
We shut the equipment down, quickly and find that a valve has closed in the process, creating no place for the liquid to go. This means that there is a control issue on their part creating problems for the equipment. Once this is discovered, our contact is really embarrassed and thanks us for the assistance.
We then talk with him and a couple of other people about 1) how outstanding our service was for this issue and 2) about an outstanding quotation for $20K worth of equipment. At that point we got a verbal commitment for the additional equipment to be purchased next month.
They do need the equipment, but we helped them and they appreciated that. Breweries are interesting places to go. They smell good (like a fraternity house on a weekend morning) and there are interesting processes. It seems that Sam Adams is taking control of their brewing from Miller. Good for them.
2 comments:
ACK! What a trip. Good you were able to help them and it wasn't your part malfunctioning after all :)
Do you get to bring home samples??
Cool! Debugging is debugging, isn't it? No matter who you are and what your role is, assume it's your fault and keep going until you figure out what the problem really is....
Glad it turned out to be NMB (not my bug!) and that the way you handled it resulted in an even better relationship with the customer!
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