Siemens supports local content with service centre workshop

Determined to reduce the cost of operation in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector without compromising quality, Siemens Nigeria has invested over €3 million in the facility Service Workshop in Port Harcourt.

Regarded as the first facility of its kind for Siemens in West, East and Central Africa, the workshop, according the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the company, Onyeche Tifase, will reduce capital flight in the country and will also facilitate the implementation of Nigeria’s Content policy.

Speaking at the commissioning of the facility, Tifase said the workshop is equipped to repair and overhaul highly sophisticated equipment that would previously have been sent overseas.

She said that this will ensure that the company remained even closer to its customers and can provide greater responsiveness, reduce turnaround time and optimise costs for undertaking maintenance programs.

She listed the future development plans for the workshop to include the provision of electrical repair services for equipment such as motors, drives, switchgear, transformers, distribution boards and others. “This will enable the establishment a one-stop service centre catering to all range of Siemens equipment and solutions across various sectors and industries,” she added.

Tifase stated: “Siemens Service Centre stands as a shining example of how leading Original Equipment Manufacturers can localise their services, increase value-addition and contribute strategically to the much-needed diversification of Nigeria’s economy.“We recognise this as a groundbreaking moment, not just for Siemens, but for Nigeria and Nigerians.”

“Siemens equipment outperforms in various oil and gas, manufacturing, utility and infrastructure facilities worldwide. In Nigeria, our vision for many years has been to create a world-class facility and workshop environment where service excellence is fostered to align with our client’s ever-changing needs.

We are proud to have developed a facility that is ISO 9001 accredited and offers a modern working environment for our partners and employees.”She said it had become even more critical in today’s economy to ensure that industrial plants and facilities run at maximum capacity and efficiency over an extended lifecycle.

“The technical experts and other employees located in the Siemens service workshop are well trained, certified and capable of developing and delivering precisely the right support to ensure maximum results and address all our customer’s service needs.

“This will ensure we remain even closer to our customers and can provide greater responsiveness, reduce turnaround time and optimise costs for undertaking maintenance programmes.”

Commenting, Vice President, Region South and West Europe and Africa, Siemens, Philipp Kurney, said: “The capital investment in this facility is right about three million euros. That is one element to it. I think the second and potentially more important element is the amount of training and investment in people.

“We have taken a lot of people locally and put them on training programmes, allow them to learn in our factories at Europe and America.”Also, the Maintenance and Integrity Manager, Shell Exploration and Production Companies in Nigeria, Oji Eberechukwu, described the workshop as a critical milestone.

He said it would support the Nigerian Content Development agenda and position Siemens as a more responsible and corporate business citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

He said, “For the Upstream business, this current challenge means that we need to become more focused to find ways of eliminating waste and doing things cheaper while still delivering the same or better business outcomes in order to remain profitable.

“We need to simplify how we do business internally and with our key suppliers, vendors and stakeholders as this will be critical to remaining competitive in the near term and in the very long term. The key driver is to keep our unit operating costs as low as possible to remain a healthy business.

“To achieve this objective, we must maintain discipline, eliminate all wasteful or unnecessary cost, remove or stop non-value adding scopes, challenge ways of working to find cheaper and simpler solutions at all levels in our businesses, including doing work ourselves where we have the competencies and capacity to do so while leaving the truly specialist work to the specialists.”