Picture the scene. It’s late on a Tuesday afternoon in March, arguably one of the busiest times of the logistics year as the end of the month, the quarter and the year fast approaches. My focus at 1730 is slowing drawing towards my drive home to see the family, after a long day in the office
And then…normality is broken when I get that phone call. “John, we have a machine that has broken down in Newcastle. We need you to collect one from us straight away” By the way, this machine weighs over 700kgs, is in a crate and will need 2 men in a box sided vehicle with a tail lift to not only get it to the site but to de-crate it and position it in the room of choice in the hospital. “Ok, where is the working machine presently”, I asked, knowing that all of our vehicles and manpower had already been scheduled for the following days activity. To give us a chance, I was hoping that it might be in Manchester but I was half expecting that it would be in the London area. “
Luxembourg”, was his reply.
I recently had to answer a tender when one of the questions was, “What would you do if…” Well, here I was in a real live situation and I guess after the initial panic the answer is you just ‘focus’ and start gathering all of your options. While the Bishopsgate team were exploring how we could manage this from the UK, I called my colleagues in TENESO Belgium. That isn’t to say that they too would not be busy because it is the end of month, quarter and year in Belgium too! But we are kindred spirits and collectively we help each other out whenever we can.
It was now 1830 CET so I checked my mobile and called Olivier Mozer who was in his car travelling home. To cut a long story short, by 2100 the wheels were turning. By 2300 the unit had been collected and at 1630 the following day the unit had b
een installed.
It is sometimes hard to quantify just how powerful and strong the TENESO Europe SE shareholder network is. It’s a successful business that is run and operated by like-minded people that has at its core trust and mutual respect. Perhaps we could have covered this from the UK that evening but we would not have been able to get the machine in Newcastle that quickly. Playing the TENESO trump card made the impossible, possible
