1 - What are your waranty terms and conditions on your systems ?
The standard warranty is one year for parts and labor, the warranty is sometimes extended to 2 years on specific systems and agreement. The warranty covers the diagnostic of failure, the replacement of defective parts (excluding consumable parts), and the repair such that the system can return to a normal operating mode.
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2 - And about servicing customers sites far from your Grenoble offices ?
The travelling & Lodging associated to a service is comprised in the warranty. Before deciding (with the customer) to send a service engineer, there is some preliminary attempts to fix the problem by tel and email, at least do everything possible to understand what the problem is. This is sometimes asking customer's help and support for determining what could be wrong and react as quickly as possible. Most customers are happy to help in the measure of their resources so that the problem can be understood and resolved asap. If there is to be a onsite service, it is important that the engineer brings the correct parts.
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3 - What about Customers sites outside of France ?
In Europe, we offer the warranty on our systems Ex-Works our office of Grenoble-France. Parts and labor are comprised but travelling & Lodging are charged at real cost. Our objective is obviously not to earn on travelling aspects, but rather to optimize the running time of our equipment and the best possible use.
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4 - How do you warranty the spare parts ?
Most industrial suppliers provide parts or sub-parts checked out before delivery and normally fully operational at reception before install. Otherwise they would be replaced immediately. Then there is a difference between what is usually called " a consumable part" or a part that can wear out in the frame of its normal use, and a specific part constituting a sub-assembly that can possibly fail and be replaced. The first one "Consumable" is no longer warranted (except specific cases) after the beginning of its use (example adhesive film for dicing, tests needles, dicing wheels…). The other parts are typically warranted three months (most mechanical parts of an equipment). Some parts have an very long warranty (micropositioners for tests have 5 years warranty).
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5 - What is the standard delivery term on your products ?
This depends much of the type of product. The "consumable" products (probe tips, probe holders, test sockets, adhesive film, dicing wheels…) have delivery schedule that go from ex-Works (in stock) to 3-4 weeks. Our quotations always mention the typical delivery time which is the most happening for the type of product. Once an order is received, we check the actual delivery time related to production workload at that time and confirm. Most of the time the typical delivery is taken in the higher range so as to not disturb a production line if the ordered products have not been delivered.
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6 - How to optimize the delivery schedule for consumable parts regularly used ?
There are two possibilities: One is to place an order of several lines, each line corresponds to a product that can be requested to deliver at a specific period. This allows us to put the product in stock before the requested delivery taking in consideration the typical leadtime of that product.
The second possibility is to know the typical delivery time and add a safety margin of 2-3 weeks to be sure that the delivery will be within the requested timeframe.
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7 - What is the lifetime of your products ?
Good question, and the answer is Yes, for some of them ! Most products lifetime will be technically perfect at the installation. This will obviously degrade by the time in function of the technical improvements.
Typically production or research systems are used during many years. It depends on what the product is used for, what part of mechanical versus electronic…
Some consumable products do have a lifetime, i.e their specifications are only guaranted during the specified lifetime and can change after that amount of time. It is the case for adhesive plastic films, usually most products containing chemicals…
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8 - How could I make sure that my equipment will stay up to date for both hardware and software upon the use ?
Obviously, an equipment can only be "the most technically performing" when it is installed and responding to its application, and for a short period of time after that (one or two years). Then the product evolves, the software gets into upgrades, users feedback are incorporated in the new production when they help fixing some problems or optimizing the use. In such way, one would never buy anything as the next release is always better. However if there is a need to produce or to characterize, there is a need for the adequate equipment, in the state of the art when the equipment is delivered. During the warranty period, the technical improvements are free as well as software improvements which were part of the original configuration. After the warranty period, it is still possible to upgrade and bring the equipment to the latest technical level.
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9 - What are the maintenance contracts that you offer ?
The typical Maintenance contract after warranty which consists of a preventive annual or bi-annual maintenance (the preventive maintenance is made purposely to discover possible problems before they happen in production) and a maintenance upon request. The contract specific to a sale of equipment which can include stocking parts or agreed response time… We also offer a service on call, based on a standard hourly rate (or day or half day) including travelling & Loding if necessary.
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10 - And what about the application support ?
This is free and available during all the use of the equipment. Our interest is to have you knowing and using as best possible, keeping updated on the product evolution and newest applications. Our suppliers understand the philosophy as well and support us in this direction. We train specialized engineers to keep a very close communication with the manufacturers and can update and support on new applications, or help in writing new tests programs…
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11 - By the way, how do you carry the technical support before and after sales ?
This is a key element in our activity. We can't propose highly technical products if we are not able to demonstrate the product for the requested application, or show tests results on customer samples. We do have several resources for that goal, Tests at suppliers sites in the case where we do not have the equipment available at our office, demonstrations at our office or at customer site, sampling and follow up of results…This is purposely made in order for the customer to purchase an equipment that he is totally convinced of the perfect match to his need and the future support assured by MW.
The after sales support is the same when is is concerning the application part, for the technical support and maintenance, please refer to question Q8.
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