Background

Tronrud Engineering AS, has been designing and manufacturing customized machinery for clients all over the world since it was established by Ola Tronrud in 1977. Since then it has grown from one man working from home to become a company of over 150 employees based in two brand new buildings at Eggemoen, Norway. The current CEO is Olav Tronrud, son of founder Ola.

Strengths

You don’t have to spend long talking with Tronrud’s management or employees to understand the company’s key strengths. It essentially boils down to three things: cooperating closely with customers to understand their unique needs, having highly skilled staff and being a pioneer of innovative new technologies.

Complacency kills

These strengths have been vital ingredients in Tronrud’s success within the manufacturing sector. It’s a sector which can be tough and unforgiving; and where complacency kills companies both large and small. So it’s vital to stay abreast of the latest innovations, adapt and keep in tune with customers’ ever evolving needs. A side effect of this is that both industrial companies and their staff are becoming increasingly specialized. It simply isn’t possible to be an expert in every field, so as CEO, Olav Tronrud explains, “in today’s business it is even more important to have good partners to collaborate with”.

Shifting market trends

As with other machine manufacturers, Tronrud has recently seen a number of trends and shifts in the market. Simply delivering a working machine to customers is no longer enough. Head of Packaging Technology, Erik Hjertaas, highlights another change, “a lot of organizations they actually don’t have all the capability in-house to do advanced service and maintenance on their machines”. Instead they want the machine manufacturer to provide these services. Consequently, machine manufacturers become stakeholders with regards to the machine users’ production efficiency and plant downtime.

Responding with innius

Tronrud has dealt with this shift by adopting a more servitized business model. Key to this has been the adoption of innius, to remotely provide real-time machine performance data, and storing this for future use. This connects Tronrud’s machines to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), opening up powerful new opportunities. It enables the deeper analysis of performance data and real-time alerts. innius further supports Tronrud’s strengths by enabling yet closer cooperation with customers through in-app chat functionality and increasing staff understanding of how customers actually use machines.

In practice, these features enable the business model to change because Tronrud’s engineers can identify machine problems earlier, leading towards predictive maintenance strategies. Specific parts in need of replacement can be identified more accurately, allowing service engineers to take the correct part with them first time. Tronrud remains the parts supplier by default, making this a stronger stream of revenue. And, the lessons learnt are fed back into the design of new machines.

What this all adds up to, is happier customers, confident in Tronrud Engineering not only as a supplier of quality machines, but also in its abilities as a service provider.