2.3 After Sales Service
Although the marine and power business areas are now equally important in terms of sales, past sales of marine engines have been much higher than sales of engines for stationary power applications. Indeed, of the total of more than 100,000 MW of engines sold, around 80 per cent have been for marine customers. Consequently, most of the opportunities for providing after sales services relate to marine customers.
Wartsila Power Divisions operates a single service network for both its power and marine customers. The company has a presence in 53 countries, with a fairly even spread of engineers around the world other than in major harbours and shipbuilding locations (such as Japan, Korea, China and Singapore) where larger numbers of personnel are concentrated and where they also have workshop facilities. All engineers are fully trained in the factories where the engines they service are built.
As the Sulzer brand low-speed engines are built by licensees it is said to be much more difficult to obtain service contracts as these are usually let by local engine builders to local service providers. Nevertheless, this is an area that Wartsila Power Divisions is trying to build up.
More generally, the company's strategy is to try to secure long term service and maintenance contracts. Most recently this has extended to offering 'operational services', whereby (for example) Wartsila Power Divisions will operate a power plant. The company has explored providing 'operational services' to marine customers but recognises the difficulties in that vessels registered in some countries can only be staffed by mariners employed by the shipping company.
