The Future Top Team of Scania Services are in the Making
Scania Top Teams, five out of our twelve branches in Malaysia made it to the National Final today. These Scania technicians are dedicated specialists who contribute to Scania’s premium brand image and well trusted and respected name in the heavy-duty commercial transportation industry. The winning team, B100 from Scania Malaysia Ipoh workshop will be flown off to Thailand to join their colleagues from Singapore and Philippines for the Asia-Pacific Regional Final and the winner will represent the region for the Grand Final in Europe.
Dr Ahmad Zainal Abd Aziz, Head of Automotive Department and Suhardi Md Yunus, Head of Commercial Vehicle Department, of Institut Kemahiran Tinggi Belia Negara Dusun Tua (IKTBNDT) graced the event with 15 trainees. They were invited to observe the competition and to attend a career talk.
Top Team is a global competition for professional service teams within the Scania service network. Everyone who works in the service area is welcomed to compete in teams of three to five people. The most common contestants are service technicians, parts specialists and service advisors. Scania Top Team begins at the teams’ workshops with theoretical challenges in two parts. As teams advance to the national final stage, the theoretical exercises are supplemented by practical ones. The competition requires a high level of technical knowledge, team spirit and discipline. The format of the competition follows daily work patterns with the most essential objective being to satisfy the needs of our customers.
The Scania Top Team competition is a way of recognising the importance of service personnel to be the best, and top of their profession. It is brains, technological skills and teamwork that characterise the service personnel who Scania recruit and develop over the years. The industry’s need for service personnel such as service technicians, parts experts and service advisors, is growing. Truck, bus and engine uptime determine customer profitability. And uptime, to a large extent, lies in the hands of skilled and motivated service personnel. Essentially these traits were evident in all the qualifying teams, however the winning team demonstrated a superior level to secure the Top Team title.
The purpose of the Top Team competition is to increase knowledge about Scania’s products and services, as well as to strengthen collaboration between service, parts and service advisor personnel. Scania Top Team also gives a good overview of the national competence levels regarding Scania’s service offer and the actions needed in order to keep expertise on top.
Apart from strengthening the Scania image to employees and customers, Top Team also creates an understanding and commitment to Driving the Shift towards a sustainable transport system.
Only 12 teams, out of 1 500 teams worldwide from 70 countries, will go through to the Grand final round in Europe, competing for a handsome first prize of 50 000 Eur to the winner, 30 000 Eur to the first runner-up and 20 000 Eur to the second runner-up.
“By focusing on developing our front-line expertise, the Scania’s Service Technicians, we are ensuring the quality of the support and services we provide to our customers. Securing vehicles uptime is what matters to our customers and what helps them grow their business and profitability. As our industry undergoes the greatest technological shift of a lifetime, Scania’s front-line experts gathered in the ultimate challenge will be taking a leading position in driving the shift. We hope to attract more talents through these exemplar performance from these teams today. Congratulation to B100 from the Scania Malaysia Ipoh workshop for working as a team full of individual brilliance to win the 2022/2023 National Top Team competition.” expressed Heba El Tarifi, Managing Director, Scania Southeast Asia.
This generation of technicians and the future ones are expected to drive real change in line with the transport industry undergoing a technological shift. Top team members will have a unique opportunity to affect and implement the technology needed to create a sustainable transport system.