The Employee: Tim Williams

Location: Dallas/Fort Worth

The Customer: Driveline

 

With an extensive technical background, Tim Williams knows as well as anyone: The taking a part’s not too bad. Putting it back together? A whole different ballgame.

Fear not. In right around six hours, Tim carefully, strategically stripped an MBM folding unit to its bones, repaired it, and put it back together for a customer to fully utilize once again.

Prior to coming to Datamax, Tim worked as the technology department head for Cinemark Theaters in Dallas. He worked with analog projectors, sound equipment, point of sale kiosks … anything basically with an electronic board was his responsibility.

“And then I was a manager at a financing location. An employee from Datamax came in (Quandre McCoy), and told me a little bit about what they did,” Tim said. “I missed doing tech work, sitting behind the desk wasn’t really for me.”

Having that craving for being back out in the field, he applied on a Friday, got a call on Monday morning and interviewed the next day.

“Tim came to Datamax with no copier experience and started on the Production Team, one of the toughest teams,” Service Manager Daniel Ketchum said. “All of Tim’s customers love him, and he’s constantly making Raving Fans.”

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The Client's Need

Driveline is a large-scale retail merchandising company that routinely creates and ships out all kinds of advertising. Their MBM folding unit had been in disarray for quite a while, but the team there had not addressed the issues and, instead, created inefficient workarounds. When a new employee came in, they were shown the unit’s tendencies and told “this is what it does. This is how to try and make it work.”

“Essentially, they were giving their customers inadequate products, or they would end up reprinting and trying it again, until the (unit) folded correctly,” Tim said.

The Team's Approach

Tim had basically nothing to work off of when he arrived. No service documentation. Nothing to use as a reference for replacing the parts. He was going into this service call relatively blind.

“When I talked to the customer, I detailed to her what it will take to fix it. I got the parts overnighted, and the next morning I got to work.”

Hours went into gutting the machine down to the frame, leaving only the electrical components. He noticed that rollers were so worn and used, the core material was showing through, evidence that the company had certainly utilized the machine in the past.

Tim also had to remember where everything went, so he took detailed photos and made his own drawings to map his progress.

“Essentially I was making my own service manual that I’m going to follow backwards,” he said. “The customer is literally laughing about it, because I don’t think they knew it was going to take as much as it did to get this unit back up and running.”

What Made Them a Raving Fan?

“After putting the unit back together, he turned it back on, and it worked like a champ.

“They were ecstatic. Very grateful for the time I spent on it,” Tim said. “It’s a great feeling, whenever you see something in a million pieces and you put it back together.”