For KHS customer workshops are a fantastic way of really strengthening specialist contacts and building up relations with a company. At the same time, KHS learns first hand what a company’s expectations and requirements are. How customers see things is thus directly conveyed to the organization, acting as a direct incentive for us to provide even better products and services which assure the customer long-term economic success.

As you can see, things don’t end once KHS has sold a line or machine but begin – or rather, our relationship with the customer is taken several steps further. For KHS is a reliable partner who provides advice and support not just during the installation and commissioning of a system but throughout its entire life cycle. Besides offering various services, the KHS After Sales & Service Department systematically promotes this partnership worldwide by holding a number of workshops for its customers.

“There was a lot of useful information but I drew the greatest benefit from information on new developments and upgrades.”

Krunoslav Kolar
Packaging & maintenance manager of the Technical Department, Karlovacka pivovara (Heineken), Karlovac, Croatia, on the service workshop in Vienna

The approach here is to focus entirely on the customer and on what he or she is particularly concerned with. We also naturally have to immerse ourselves in the customer’s business and operations – and of course we want to listen. This is the only way to understand a customer’s current and future problems and needs – and to find a solution to them together. In 2013, the teams at KHS Service not only had very full schedules, with twelve workshops to run; they also cultivated their contacts with customers in practically all four corners of the globe, from the Philippines to South America and from East Africa to China.

What customers expect from our service workshops can basically be split into three categories:

  • To gain closer contact and increase communication with KHS
  • To receive information on new developments
  • To discuss concrete topics relevant in practice.

Tatia Haupt, head of Sales, Spares and Conversion Development at KHS GmbH, sums up: “To date we’ve had extremely positive and constructive feedback on our service workshops. This encourages us to intensify our meetings and discussions with customers in the future.”

Insights: four exemplary workshops

General elements of the workshops in Brazil + Southeast Europe + Turkey + Mexico

Goals/topicsBenefits/findings
  • Get-Together
  • Informal first meeting
  • Introduce all participants
  • Assign people to functions
  • Present KHS Global
  • Structure and range of services
  • Introduce KHS Service:
    • Local teams (sales, service, service engineers)
    • Services

    • Contacts: who does what?
    • What support is available?
  • Introduce technical topics
    (including discussion):
    • Available upgrades
    • Current innovations
    • Conversions/modernizations
    • Line audits
    • Customer-specific topics


    • Customer learns about our product spectrum, innovations, and service tools

    • Basis for process optimization formed
    • Concrete systems and solutions developed
  • Customer/KHS relations
  • Strengths and required action
  • Customer expectations of KHS Service
    • KHS Service status quo
    • Service tops and flops
  • Customer requirements ascertained
    • What’s good, what isn’t so good?
    • Conclusion: is customer satisfied with service?
  • Open discussion/exchange
  • Relationships can develop
  • Final meeting
    • Agree on follow-up
    • Preview of next workshop
  • Definition of everyone’s position
    • Talks and presentations, concepts and offers
    • Sustainability confirmed/manifested

The workshop concept: Knowledge transfer à la KHS

External customer workshops are a composite part of the solid service partnerships that exist between KHS and the companies it supports all over the world. The internal aspect of regular knowledge transfer between KHS Service personnel is an­other major component in this concept for success.

The purpose of these in-house meetings is to provide specific expert knowledge on new or optimized machines or processes and to draw the attention of our Service employees to a customer’s potential requirements.
This includes conversions and upgrades if they result in added value and a competitive advantage for the relevant company.

The top experts in the global KHS Group chair and present this transfer of knowledge. In the last year alone, similar knowledge transfer workshops were held in Brazil, Argentina, China, East Africa, and Turkey, among other places. This year this concept is to be continued in other countries including the United States, Vietnam, and South Africa.

The following select statements by customers show that the various teams at KHS have obviously given participants just what they want.

  • “I was extremely pleased with the event. The information provided by KHS was very useful and I feel I have great support in my work,” states Arturo Mendoza, project manager for Coca-Cola FEMSA in Mexico.
  • Marcelo Higa, corporative manager of maintenance for SOLAR BR COCA-COLA, Brazil, was similarly positive. “Of course we’d like more workshops like this in the future, as we know we have to be constantly up to date in this sector.” And he goes on to name a few specific benefits for his company. “We put the ideas from the workshop into practice at our company and draw up checklists to sound out the optimization potential of conversions and upgrades.”
  • “We can now communicate problems and solutions better,” is how Adnan Köprülü, filling & packaging supervisor for Efes in Turkey, sums up the benefits of the workshop for his company.
  • And Krunoslav Kolar, packaging & maintenance manager of the Technical Department at Karlovacka pivovara (Heineken) in Karlovac, Croatia, is full of praise. “The workshop was very well organized and the individual topics were extremely interesting and well balanced. There was a lot of useful information but I drew the greatest benefit from information on new developments and upgrades. KHS showed us possible methods of optimization in detail. And generally, too, everybody could ask specific questions and was given in-depth answers. This is what I call professional support.”

“Of course we’d like more workshops like this in the future, as we know we need permanently updating in this sector.”

Marcelo Higa
Corporative manager of maintenance for SOLAR BR COCA-COLA, Brazil, on the service workshop in Brazil.

As the four example service workshops from 2013 illustrate (see Goals and benefits), the discussion of technical subjects and customer relations varies in its intensity depending on who’s taking part. The same applies to general and customer-specific themes. Those who joined the workshop in Southeast Europe, for instance, may have come from Romania, Macedonia, Croatia, and the Czech Republic but they all worked for the Heineken Group. The participants were thus able to deal with the harmonization of work processes between KHS and Heineken in detail.

The situation in Turkey was altogether different. In order maintain the confidentiality of customer-specific topics, the KHS Service team in Turkey arranged separate workshops for two different CSD customers with subsequent plant visits. In Brazil, the workshop held during the Fispal Tecnologia trade show allowed KHS to present and discuss the next generation of lines and machines to and with a live audience.

All in all, the principle aim of our workshops worldwide is to inform customers about our range of products and services on a technical level and to intensify and strengthen customer relations on a personal level. In short, our service workshops are part of our practiced policy of customer proximity and underline KHS’ chief vision of becoming First Choice in Technology and Service.

New service on the web: The KHS upgrade finder

Competitive pressure dictates that manufacturers constantly adapt to meet new market demands and therefore also modernize their production technology. What is challenging in this case is that no company wants to shelve production lines which could go on working for several decades. So what’s the solution?

The answer is to upgrade! With KHS upgrades, existing machinery can be adapted to meet future production, quality, and sales targets. The new upgrade finder on the KHS website at www.khs.com provides an initial overview of which upgrades are available for which lines.

This is how the KHS upgrade finder works The user is given his or her individual upgrade quickly and reliably in four logical steps. This is how it’s done. First you select which machines an upgrade is available for from a product group (such as fillers or inspectors).

  1. When you click on the required section, the system first shows you which possible product groups KHS provides upgrades for (such as inspection).
  2. Once you’ve selected the product group, in the second step you then choose the type of container (glass, for example).
  3. At the third stage in the process you then click on your sector (e.g. beer).
  4. Step four gives you all of the possible optimization measures KHS can offer based on your selection (such as efficiency).

This is what the KHS upgrade finder can provide. True to the KHS philosophy of working together to find solutions, which boost a customer’s competitiveness, the results include a list from which you can select the KHS Service contact nearest to you. Specific questions on alternative solutions and systems can thus be readily discussed – regardless of where you are in the world, which area you wish to optimize, and which line is due for an upgrade.

The result With the help of KHS’ upgrade finder, companies can keep in step with the rapid changes in technology and markets and maintain a perfect balance between the resources used and the benefits they wish to gain.

Your contact on this topic

Tatia Haupt
KHS GmbH, Dortmund, Germany

Phone: +49 231 569-1263
Email: tatia.haupt@khs.com