Feeding the Celtic tiger: Ireland's most prolific machine tool distributor has built its business on supplying the right machine for the job

摘要

IT was a bright, fresh Monday morning, and the links behind Dublin Bay looked green and inviting from the window of a crowded Ryanair jet. It had been a busy weekend, explained Billy Crawford as he met me at the airport. And why wouldn't it have been? It's a great city for cultural pursuits - rugby, theatre, Guinness and so forth. However Lister Machine Tools' managing director had been absorbed in more prosaic matters - trialling an A-axis table on an Elb creep feed grinder for a customer. 'Service and support, that's what's critical for most customers,' he insists, defining the role of Ireland's largest machine tool distributor. 'Some customers may think they can buy cheaper direct from the manufacturer -but they don't have the leverage when something goes wrong. We can provide technical support for application engineering, installation and service.' Such activities engage about twenty of the company's fifty staff: eleven service engineers reporting to the Dublin headquarters, two to the Belfast branch, and two application engineers plus dedicated office-based service staff co-or dinating backup and spares.