Supplier Comments on the Concept
Early in the 90ies, an industrial concentration process emerged as a consequence of continued price pressure and expanded global requirements of customers with international orientation and operation. This was not only an indication of the car and steel manufacturers but also the airlines as well as the power transmission distributors, to name only a few famous examples.
Mainly two strategies are applied: acquisitions and/or alliances. While acquisitions and mergers need all resources to finance and to integrate, particularly in case of an international merger, the attractiveness of an alliance is the benefit potential of approx. 80 % of a merger combined with a significantly lower financial risk and less cultural clashes.
Based on this analysis the Kistenpfennigs understood the need for change and started a visionary process: Service Alliance for Europe, named SAFE.
Patrick Kistenpfennig and I on behalf of FAG KUGELFISCHER had our first break through in 1997 by presenting and successfully „selling“ this idea to GM in Rüsselsheim, mainly as blending of „Integrated Supply“ and Patrick Kistenpfennig`s own input of his vision.
SAFE is a trendsetter. If the partners of the alliance do it right it offers enormous business potential and superior competitiveness in the distribution and service industry.
Walter Schwarz
Executive Vice President, FAG European Division
FAG Sales Europe – Mai 1998
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More and more customers go for global supply contracts. Suppliers must not ignore these needs and requirements. This also includes global service agreements. Customers want to establish global standards not only for products but also for services to implement best practice solutions throughout the customer’s sites, get a highest possible level of cost transparency, and reduce costs continuously. This particularly applies to maintenance.
Therefore, we absolutely appreciate the efforts of a distribution partner of ours like Kistenpfennig to become a real pan-European service provider for the GM plants as far as bearings are concerned. This is a clear differentiator and a USP as well. It’s a growth driver not only for Kistenpfennig but also for FAG. We need our distribution partners to offer maintenance service to the end users and, hence, they have to address global service needs and requirements of the end users.
We expect SAFE to offer a continuously and consistently high level of service to their European Customers and materialize continuous improvement processes. This must also be a crucial criterion to select the SAFE partners.
Winfried Haag
Member of the Board of Management
FAG Industrial Bearings and Services - July 19, 2001
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In our opinion it is very important to be able to solve European-wide delivery-requests for some customers in the MRO-market. The cooperation between distributors in different countries, like SAFE, is one good way to manage that.
But we are convinced that such institutions will only be accepted by the suppliers if there is a good relation-ship between these groups and the suppliers. Concerning the "cross-border-problems" all participants have to be aware of the different price-levels in the countries.
In case of INA-products we expect a close cooperation and coordination from the SAFE-partners with our INA-companies in the different countries, so we can avoid internal competition and price reductions.
Axel Schulenburg
Manager Service International
INA Wälzlager Schaeffler oHG – August 2001