Jakob

Jakob Oosterhuis: Delfzijl Technical Service

#WeAreViskoTeepak
2024.01.31
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Jakob Oosterhuis is a 53-year-old employee of ViskoTeepak. He is married with three children and lives (according to him) in the most beautiful village of Groningen, Termunten. In 1990 Jakob started at ViskoTeepak with an internship for 3 months. He then studied electrical engineering. In 1991, after his studies, Jakob was looking for employment. ViskoTeepak quickly noticed his qualities and qualifications. ViskoTeepak asked Jakob to join the company once again and he was granted a one-year contract. Back then there were only two shirring machines, but ten tying machines! In 1995, Delfzijl started to add more machines and the location grew rapidly.

After the annual contract, Jakob was taken into permanent employment and started installing all power supplies and alarm systems in the factory. In 2012, the maintenance supervisor left, and Jakob was asked to take over his position. He went to work directly for Johan Hoeksema (Maintenance manager & product development).

What is most rewarding in your job for you?
Seeing a machine park in which everything runs like a sun. I also really like to build a machine from the start.

What are the advantages of the Service for the organization?
The knowledge and innovation opportunities. By having our own Technical Service, ViskoTeepak is less dependent on other companies. For a smooth production, it is essential that you can repair the machines quickly. Technical Service can provide that support.

What are the challenges you face?
The positive challenge is to keep all machines running properly by performing regular maintenance due to a strict planning. Another form of a challenge is to align the wishes of the management with the ideas of the Technical Service. For example, are we planning by date or efficiency? We do not always agree, but we find our balance together.

What are you good at as a team?
We are seven employees and have been working together for serveral years. We know each other well and there is mutual trust. Usually, half of a word is enough to understand each other. That is pretty good. We work like a well-oiled machine with the seven of us. Everyone has their own strengths.

"We work like a well-oiled machine with the seven of us. Everyone has their own strengths."

Jakob & team

What would be an ideal situation?
If all operators also had mechanical knowledge. That they can also solve the first-line disruptions themselves and that the technical department has more time for innovations and other efficient solutions.

My dream is that all machines are connected to a central control room where someone can keep an eye on all the machines from that position. That every deviation is immediately visible on the monitors. We would still need operators, but much less.

Furthermore, it would be great if there would be automated driving robot cars in the factory. These could take the pallets to the right machines and pick up the packed boxes from the machines to bring to the warehouse. That would really save time.

I also like the innovation that Johan Hoeksema has produced, building shirring machines with output on two sides. This allows one operator to operate one machine with more results.

Sometimes I wish we would have more time to do research, innovate and do testing. Then we could move forward in our level of competitiveness and produce solutions that would benefit ViskoTeepak as a whole. We are always happy to help. For example, in recent years we visited Poznan, Kenosha, Nuevo Laredo and even various distributors in Spain and China. We provide maintenance and advise where it is necessary. It is always nice to meet our colleagues worldwide. Together we come up with the best solutions!