A small chicken processing plant in central Georgia, USA, installed two Nash CL-2002 (100 HP) vacuum pumps to transport and eviscerate 20,000 chickens daily. The pumps were rebuilt by a non-Nash shop and showed signs of problems as soon as they were started.
On the first pump, they quickly found the shaft was out by 0.070”, which caused the pump to jump all over the place. The second pump would lock up within 90 seconds for no reason.
Need for Nash vacuums
It's Monday afternoon, and Gardner Denver gets a call from the owner of the chicken plant on my cellphone: “Eddie, how fast can you get me 3 Nash CL-2002 vacuums?”
They respond: “there are 8 of these in stock near St. Louis.” He says: “well, send them as fast as possible!” By this time it is late in the day, all the banks are closed due to a Monday Holiday and everyone at the Nash Distribution Center near St. Louis is home and cozy since it's only 6 degrees outside.
Loading the pumps
NASH leaps into action and gets the pumps loaded onto a truck and arrives in central Georgia
She enters from stage left, Nash's Distribution Manager. She's at home when she starts to get phone calls about a customer that tried to use a non-Nash shop and has 20,000 chickens sitting in a holding pen and 20,000 more arriving in about 12-14 hours.
NASH leaps into action and gets the pumps loaded onto a truck. The truck had two drivers so it arrived in central Georgia about 12 hours later.
Findings
The lessons learned on this one:
- Users can't process chickens without a vacuum.
- Don't use a Non-Nash shop for rebuilds.
- Nash has a large inventory of stock pumps.
- Nash can get users out of a bind with emergency shipments.