NSK has named its latest Certified AIP Partner, Coroll s.r.o., which becomes the first authorised distributor in the Czech Republic to receive the accolade. At an award ceremony on 13 May, the certificate was presented to the company´s management team, along with NSK’s ‘Man towards future’ award, which signifies impressive levels of progress. Coroll was nominated to become a Certified AIP Partner by NSK Poland.
Established in 1995, Coroll is one of the largest distributors of bearings, ball screws and linear motion technologies in the Czech Republic.
Only those distribution partners able to successfully complete a 10-stage plan can become Certified AIP Partners, a process that includes intensive training and in-field assessments.
For Coroll, the programme involved a number of key stages, including: situation analysis (evaluating and understanding the customer problem); designing solutions (including costings, return on investment analysis and other related information); implementation of the solution; calculating the actual savings; and extending the solution to other operations.
Expert NSK personnel delivered extensive training that focused not only on NSK products, tools and services, but a host of other pertinent industry issues such as effective maintenance and inspection, counterfeit bearing awareness, and future developments. In the first instance, both theoretical and practical training was delivered at the candidate´s premises, before in-the-field training at customer sites. The process took more than a year to complete.
It was decided to trial Coroll´s newly acquired knowledge and skills at two customers in the steel industry: a cold mill producing sheet, and a rolling mill manufacturing steel tube. At the cold mill, an AIP project involving a reverse rolling quarto-stand produced annual costs savings of €56,921, while a project centred on punching equipment at the rolling mill generated savings of €32,820. These figures are indicative of the potential savings available to companies taking advantage of NSK´s proven AIP initiative. In addition, under supervision from NSK, the authorised distributor delivered customer training in correct bearing inspection, handling and maintenance.
Based in Hronov, Coroll becomes the fifth Certified AIP Partner in the CEE (Central and Eastern Europe) region, and will be subject to an ongoing annual review.
