FRIESS has been a reliable partner since 1972. In addition to standard products in the field of oil-water separation, cooling lubricant care or oil cleaning and dewatering, the company also finds specific solutions tailored to customers needs.
FRIESS’ aim is to reduce operating costs and increase productivity at the same time.
Interview with Oliver Benneck, General Manager at FRIESS.
What are the most common cost-related challenges your customers face, and how do your products/solutions help them cut expenses?
Oliver Benneck: Our customers frequently face challenges of fluids with a less-than-optimal service life. Fluids used in manufacturing get contaminated with particles and / or other fluids. In order to keep the fluids functional, they need to be treated or face the risk of damage to the system or sub-par manufacturing results.
We help our customers with these issues by providing solutions that treat their process fluids and increase their service life. This can take the form of filtration systems or simple oil-water-separation. Our goal is always to increase the quality of the fluids and increase the service life of the fluids. This not only increases productivity, but also decreases manufacturing costs by cutting waste.
Can you share a specific example of how your products/solutions have improved efficiency for a client?
O.B: A company that casts and machines large stainless steel components has a total of 16 large CNC machines to machine the large cast parts. The coolant tanks of these machines were very shallow and therefore had a large surface area. The oil skimmer previously used was insufficient to remove the oil accumulating in the coolant. By switching to our tube-type oil skimmers the oil removal rate could be increase significantly, improving the coolant quality and thus increasing the service life of the coolant. This increased efficiency for the customer, as now less time had to spent with changing the coolant and cleaning the coolant tanks, time which now could be spent doing more productive things. Decreasing the frequency of coolant changes also reduced the down-time of the CNC machines, increasing overall efficiency of the machines.
Find out more about our skimmers here: https://friess-online.de/en-us/oil-skimmer/
How does your technology minimize waste and optimize resource usage?
O.B: Fluids such as coolant, oils and detergents are frequently used in manufacturing processes. Due to the nature of their use, these liquids will become contaminated with particles and other fluids that reduce their effectivity and the time in which they can be used according to their specifications. Making it possible to use these liquids for longer or reuse spent liquids optimizes their usage and therefore reduces the cost of purchasing new liquid, chemicals and concentrates.
What key features of your products/solutions contribute the most to cost savings for businesses?
O.B: The high quality and durability of our products result in long-term savings for our customers. Nothing is more expensive than buying something twice. Our products deliver excellent results while having a comparably low total cost of ownership.
Are there any hidden or overlooked costs that your products/solutions help eliminate?
O.B: A lot of the costs that our products reduce are hidden in plain view, as these costs or processes are considered “normal”. Customers consider it “normal” that the hydraulic oil needs to be changed every 2-3 years (find a solution to that here: https://friess-online.de/en-us/electrostatic-oil-cleaning/) . They consider it to be normal that coolant only lasts 6 months before it goes bad. These are all overlooked costs, as these are considered ongoing costs that you cannot do anything about and are necessary.
That is where we step in. We help the customer locate waste in their fluid handling process. In this way most of our products have an ROI of less that 18 months, with some even less than that!
How do you ensure that your products/solutions provide long-term value?
O.B: FRIESS products are stress-resistant, low-wear and are designed for 24/7 use over a long period of time. This ensures that our products can provide value for our customers for over 20 years.
As they are low-maintenance, the total cost of ownership is low, especially compared to competing products, that might be cheaper, but require much higher maintenance. Furthermore, our products use consumables very sparingly (if they use them at all: https://friess-online.de/en-us/magnetic-filter/) and can even decrease the use of consumables in other treatment systems.
Do you offer tools or data analytics that help customers track efficiency improvements and cost reductions?
O.B: Most of their customers track the efficiency of our products through their purchasing department, as our products always result in a reduction of the need for purchasing new liquids, concentrate, detergents, filtrations media, etc.
However, we do not provide any tools ourselves to help our customers track the efficiency.
What role does automation play in helping businesses reduce expenses when using your products/solutions?
O.B: Most of our products are fairly low-tech in order to keep them durable and operational in even the most harsh environments.
However, our products can always be provided with control systems or integrated into existing control systems to ensure hands-off operation and some solutions always come with their own control unit, to ensure fully autonomous operation. A great exampleof this are our Skimmtelligent oil separators, that due to their design and their integrated control system, provide fully hands-off operation and oil removal: https://friess-online.de/en-us/produkt/skimmtelligent/
How do your products/solutions compare with competitors in terms of cost-effectiveness and return on investment (ROI)?
O.B: Friess products frequently replace competing products previously in use in customer’s facilities. Competing products are often cheaper to purchase, but therefore lack either quality in materials used or design, resulting in a bad user experience or simply lacking results. Our products always deliver on what is promised and thus create value for the customer.
Our products all use high grade and durable materials resulting in a very long service life of our products, creating an exceptional cost-effectiveness.
As mentioned above, most of our products achieve a break even after 18 months, with some even exceeding that. Competing products usually have a worse ROI, as they require most effort and maintenance from customer’s staff, significantly increasing the costs of ownership.
What advice would you give to businesses looking to maximize efficiency while keeping operational costs low?
O.B: Question „Normal” operational costs and find ways these can be reduced through clever investments. Invest in high quality solutions with a low total cost of ownership and low operational costs. High quality is always cheaper that cheap products in the long run.
Should you think that there is an area in which you can improve your fluid management, feel free to ask us for help. An analysis of your current situation is the first step in uncovering potential areas for improvement.