If you need routine, this is the wrong job for you

Things which sound high­ly stress­ful, stren­u­ous, and dan­ger­ous to most peo­ple are par for the course for Uwe Selt­sam. For ten years he worked as a ser­vice tech­ni­cian and trou­bleshoot­er, tak­ing on the most dif­fi­cult jobs all around the world. For four years he has been head of the Tech­ni­cal Ser­vice depart­ment, and is now on the move only 60 days a year instead of 140.

To be a trou­bleshoot­er at Rein­hausen you need to be able to work effec­tive­ly as both a team play­er and a solo prac­ti­tion­er. When you sud­den­ly get word that you‘re need­ed by a cus­tomer from Cana­da, South­ern Europe, or Africa – prefer­ably right away – then you nev­er know exact­ly what‘s in store. You have to be ready for any­thing. And as some­one who was more drawn to mar­tial arts than to team sports like foot­ball or bas­ket­ball in their youth, I am ful­ly pre­pared for that. Indeed, I‘ve been prac­tic­ing jiu-jit­su for over 20 years. That said, this doesn‘t mean that the peo­ple at Tech­ni­cal Ser­vice oper­ate exclu­sive­ly alone.

Of course, when you‘re work­ing with a cus­tomer, it‘s all on you. You are most­ly going to be a one-man show. You have to quick­ly gain an overview of the sit­u­a­tion, draw the right con­clu­sions, make the right deci­sions, bal­ance the inter­ests of every­one involved, be respon­sive to ques­tions as the des­ig­nat­ed expert, and nat­u­ral­ly do your job with­out any errors. But when you‘re back at head­quar­ters in Regens­burg, you‘re back to being part of the Rein­hausen fam­i­ly, play­ing a key role in a strong team. Every­one works towards the same goal: Solv­ing our cus­tomers‘ prob­lems – in the best pos­si­ble way and in the short­est pos­si­ble time. Togeth­er with our prod­ucts, our cus­tomers are also buy­ing a ser­vice pledge.

CREMONA / ITALY:

The private jet was already on standby. If a steelworks is experiencing downtime, every minute counts.


For this rea­son we see our­selves as an emer­gency ser­vice of sorts. A burn­ing trans­former is nor­mal­ly extin­guished by the time we arrive on site. But then we have to get to work.There‘s no way to plan when and where in the world a ser­vice job will come up. A case in point was just a few years ago: „Can you head down to Munich air­port right away? The pri­vate jet of an Ital­ian steel­works in Cre­mona is wait­ing for you there.“ Four hours lat­er, I was already in the air. When a steel­works goes down because the trans­former isn‘t work­ing, every minute counts. Time is mon­ey, as the say­ing goes. When I arrived, short­ly before it would have been time to clock off for the day, it was time for me to get to work. Thanks to our wealth of expe­ri­ence, we were able to draw the right con­clu­sions before depar­ture from the lit­tle infor­ma­tion at our dis­pos­al. As a result, we had the right spare parts with us and the trans­former was up and run­ning again.

After my stud­ies, I spent my first ten years at Rein­hausen as a trou­bleshoot­er and then as a team leader, spend­ing on aver­age 140 days a year at cus­tomer sites. Ten years, in which every morn­ing I had no idea which hotel in the world I would be spend­ing the night in. The life of a trou­bleshoot­er is some­thing you have to be able to enjoy. If you want or need rou­tine in your life, then it‘s not for you. That‘s the first thing I tell new appli­cants these days. Those who want to be back with their fam­i­lies at six o‘clock in the evening will not be hap­py in this job. If you can‘t deal with con­stant time dif­fer­ences, extreme changes in cli­mate, and high time pres­sure, while also car­ry­ing out chal­leng­ing phys­i­cal work in often dirty and unpleas­ant con­di­tions, then you will suf­fer in this job.

LUBUMBASHI/CONGO:

After nearly 40 hours traveling we stood ankle-deep in oil

To show you what I mean, I‘ll tell you a sto­ry of a time I was whisked away to the Repub­lic of the Con­go. For tourists, these jour­neys have to be planned weeks in advance for the vac­ci­na­tions alone. We promise our cus­tomers that we will endeav­or to be any­where in the world with­in 24 hours for ser­vic­ing jobs. But that‘s not always pos­si­ble. The quick­est route on this occa­sion was by plane over Paris, Johan­nes­burg and Nairo­bi to Lubum­bashi and then by car a few hours togeth­er with two ser­vice tech­ni­cians from the Brazil­ian trans­former man­u­fac­tur­er to arrive at the pri­ma­ry sub­sta­tion.

After a trav­el time of 36 hours, we were then tasked with going into the trans­former itself. Stand­ing ankle-deep in oil, we were faced with a prob­lem: On the on-load tap-chang­er, the screen­ing rings had been torn off and the insu­la­tion had become dam­aged. We made the sleeves by hand, riv­et­ed and insu­lat­ed them, and thus we were able to fix the dam­age overnight. We had to impro­vise, but the trans­former is still oper­at­ing with this solu­tion today. After 48 hours on my feet, I arrived at a hotel which didn‘t exact­ly have the same stan­dards as in Europe.

The will­ing­ness to do these kinds of jobs also has its rewards. The indus­try is very small, so you will run into col­leagues from all over the world again and again, thus cre­at­ing a net­work and friend­ships all around the globe. Many cus­tomers also real­ly appre­ci­ate this lev­el of com­mit­ment. Even today, the per­son­al thank-you let­ter from the own­er of the Ital­ian steel­works is right at the top of my draw­er.


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