Third Stuga for Stevenswood
28th October 2014

Livingston based Veka fabricator Stevenswood Ltd have recently taken delivery of a Stuga ZX4 sawing & machining center. This is the third Stuga, Stevenswood have purchased in the last ten years from the first Flowline in 2005 to a ZX3 in 2010 and now a top of the range ZX4 with an output in excess of 800 windows per week.

Stevenswood are convinced that the design and layout of the Stuga ZX machines is perfect for their needs. The Stuga machines utilize rotary tooling creating exceptional three hundred and sixty flexibility for optimal programming of operations prep by prep and profile by profile. The ‘U’ shape footprint configuration also allows one operator to run the machine most of the time, something that can’t efficiently be done on machines with a straight line footprint of 20m or more where two operators are always needed to get maximum output. In addition notching on both sides of a profile and self centralised arrow-heading are extremely useful benefits that not all machines can offer.

The new ZX4 was delivered to the recently acquired 55,000 square foot factory where the other two Stugas have been moved. This brings all of Stevenswood’s business that was spread over 6 separate units with a total space of 28,000 square foot under one roof. The total investment in the move has already cost £1.7m. As a result of the increase in production created by the ZX4 purchase along with more welding and cleaning kit Stevenswood have been able to increase production to 900 plus windows per week so far and plan to ramp this up to 1,500 per week in the near future.

As well as the historic track record of the machines Stevenswood enjoy the way Stuga service works as a sawing & machining center is only ever as good as the back-up behind it. The huge amount of work and operations these machines carry out there is always the chance of operator error, accidental damage and sheer wear and tear but this isn’t a major problem if the fabricator can make a quick call to either get a fix or book an engineer. There also needs to be enough engineering resource to know that it isn’t going to take more than a day to get a technician in when needed. Stuga can provide this level of service in Scotland just the same as in any other part of the country and do it consistently.

Field service is only as good as what is behind it and this is where Stuga scores again with a fully staffed Norfolk based Service Center that can analyse faults through phone and internet and either fix at a distance or dispatch a field engineer and coordinate any required spare parts immediately. It is a total commitment to have a technician always available at the end of a phone but that is what Stuga’s top customers like Stevenswood demand and expect.