OELCHECKER - Spring 2012

OELCHECK INSIDER INFO
More playtime fun - thanks to OELCHECK!
The fun has really begun at the big playground
in the municipality of Brannenburg.
Just in time for the start of the good weather,
on 20 April a fantastic set of climbing ropes
was opened, funded by our 2011 Christmas
donation.
In line with the motto „making children happy
instead of giving Christmas presents“, we stopped
giving our customers Christmas presents a few
years ago. Instead of giving them Christmas
presents we make donations. In 2011, this amounted
to 12,000 euros for a project for children in
our municipality.
The climbing ropes are used in particular by children
from the special-needs school and the day nursery.
Lots of children can swing, rock and balance on the
ropes at the same time as each other or compete to
throw each other off balance. Three angled, hinged
poles are connected to each other by ropes at the
top and are balanced with long guy wires. Each of
the horizontal balance beams is hung in the middle
of the poles‘ connecting ropes in such a way that
they affect each other‘s movements. At first glance,
the construction seems straightforward, but it has
been cleverly thought out.
The children could hardly wait. Mayor Mathias Lederer
(on the right-hand side in the picture) hadn‘t even
finished giving his speech when the children started to
tackle the rope construction donated by OELCHECK.
2012 customer survey results – 96% of participants would
recommend OELCHECK
A great big „thank you“ to all those who took part
in our 2012 customer survey! Out of 14,469 customers,
1,749 took part in the online questionnaire.
That‘s an exceptionally good return rate of 12%.
Participants from almost all of our fields of business
took the time to answer our various questions.
The evaluation of the questionnaires also showed
very clearly how highly users rate our lubricant
analyses and how interested they are in the potential
findings. Our range of analysis services and
additional services, our expertise, speed and customer
service were all measured along with a whole
host of other factors.
The results of the questions on customer satisfaction
were as follows:
• 96% of respondents rated their satisfaction with
our services as either „very good“ or „good“.
• 87% of customers were happy with our prices.
• Our processing speed was rated as either „very
good“ or „good“ by 95% of respondents.
• 84% were either „very satisfied“ or „satisfied“
with the quality of our customer advice.
• 87% rated our employees‘ willingness to help/
politeness as either „very good“ or „good“.
We were also very pleased with the many additional
comments and suggestions. We will look into them
in detail and comment on the most popular suggestions
in the next edition of ÖlChecker. A very
important topic, however, is our web portal www.
laborberichte.com. 42% of respondents had not
actually heard of it. We need to do a lot more work
to promote it. After all, it can offer huge benefits
for users. Customers who actively use it to manage
their laboratory reports and data say that they
don‘t know how they managed without it. Just like
visitors to our homepage, who find the extensive
information on there extremely useful. The „Knowledge
from A-Z“ section alone is fast becoming a
standard reference for lubricants and oil analytics.
The viscosity robot - the new OELCHECK laboratory assistant
Viscosity is the single most important physical
characteristic of an oil or a hydraulic fluid. It describes
the oil‘s flow qualities and is responsible for
its ability to protect surfaces against wear by building
a hydrodynamic lubricating film. Determining
viscosity at 40°C and 100°C is an integral part of
the scope of analysis for every OELCHECK analysis
kit. Since viscosity changes according to temperature,
it is measured twice.
But now our new robot is taking matters into its
own hands. It receives 20 samples on tray. It skilfully
introduces each 2 mm pipette into the oil
and extracts the prescribed amount and checks
four samples at the same time. It does everything
consistently, quickly and precisely. The sample
amounts are exactly right - „measurement error“ is
not in the vocabulary of our new „colleague“.
Of all the many tests carried out every day at our
laboratory, viscosity measurements take up a very
large proportion of our time. The required amounts
of oil must be extracted from each container using
a pipette for the two viscosity measurements. It‘s
monotonous work but work which requires a lot of
concentration on the part of laboratory assistants.
Top tip: If you want to learn more about
viscosity and viscosity temperature behaviour,
read about it all in ÖlChecker Spring 2007 at
www.oelcheck.de.
The new viscosity robot at work