Kiwi takes out Roland DG inkjet award

Mark Johnson of Aarque in New Zealand has taken out first place in the Inkjet Printer Category at the Roland DG Global SE Awards.

The Global SE Awards 2018, the third global contest that Roland DG has hosted, saw 778 Roland certified service engineers enter from around the world. The company bought together 28 finalists from local competitions for the final contest, held from April 23-25, at Roland DG Corporation in Hamamatsu, Japan.

Johnson reports that he fell into a state of shock, hearing his name announced as the winner. He says, “I was hoping for a placing but when they read out second and third and I didn’t hear my name, I thought that was it. Then when they told me I had won, I couldn’t believe it. When you look at some of the guys in that competition… it was pretty hard.”

After 19 years in the industry, he still really enjoys the work, He says, “Aarque is a good environment; a good working environment. We have a wide range of equipment to work with and an excellent team. There is never a dull moment.

Roland DG tested the finalists’ maintenance skills in two categories: inkjet printers, which represents Roland DG’s core product line, and 3D devices. The tests involved hands-on and written examinations. The local competitions which, in addition to knowledge and skill level, also measured the quality of their daily activities and how proactive they were with sharing their know-how with peers.

Roland DG Australia service agent Peter Holbrook also won an award.

The three-day competition included written and hands-on exams to test the participants’ skills and knowledge of maintenance services. The first Kiwi to win the award Johnson represented Oceania (New Zealand and Australia). Second place went to Matthew Wrench from Roland DG UK and third place went to Vincent Votruba from Slovakia.

As a part of the competition, Peter Holbrook, of Red Peril, Roland DG’s Service Agent for Western Australia, received the Engineer whose customer satisfaction score was highest for the Asia Pacific region, based on the results from satisfaction surveys sent to customers.

Roland DG Australia has congratulated Mark Johnson and Peter JHolbrook on their well-deserved awards, as well as finalists Allan Cooke, service engineer for Queensland and Darren McInnes, service engineer for Victoria.

Takaaki Koshita, general manager of Roland DG Global Technical Services, says, “By providing a series of regional competitions leading up to a final global contest, our goal is to increase the personal pride and motivation of the service engineers, as well as to challenge the knowledge and technical skills they have cultivated in their daily work and to encourage them to share their best practices and individual know-how with their peers.

“Service engineers work closely in the field with customers around the world and they are the key to achieving Roland DG’s long-held mission of maintaining and enhancing customer confidence by providing high-quality service and support. With business becoming increasingly competitive, customer service and support have never been so important, and we are working to create brand differentiation and provide peace of mind for our customers.

“For 2018, we increased the product range covered in the competition because we wanted to provide the same excellent service to all our customers using our extensive product line-up. We developed an online platform that allows service engineers around the world to regularly share their service and support knowledge as members of a global team. The Global SE Awards competition gives service engineers selected from each region the opportunity to share their knowledge and know-how with one another. As the leading service engineers in their respective regions, we hope that this will serve as a way to raise the level of service quality globally.”

Source: NewZealand Printer