Team Impact from Austria can now call themselves world champions, winning by one point over the Danish team in the VISTA final in Gothenburg. “About 30,000 people around the world are engaged in our service and after market operations. And you are the very best,” said Volvo Trucks CEO Staffan Jufors to the finalist teams at the dinner before the winners were announced.
After eight months of intensive competitions 28 service technician teams met in Gothenburg to compete for the title of VISTA World Champions of 2009. Among them where Team Impact from Austria, four dedicated and tightly knit technicians from the workshop Volvo Austria Pucking. This year was the first time that they reached the finals and got to visit Gothenburg, but they have competed before and two years ago the team reached the semifinals in Warwick.
“We have worked together every day for 15 years, so we know each other really well and don’t have to say much to understand what the other person means,” said Andreas Redl of Team Impact. “We knew that we did good both in Warwick and in the finals this year, but time is an important factor and it is stressful so you don’t have time to think about how well you are doing during the competition. Also, you never know how good you did compared to other teams.”
This year’s VISTA finals consisted of 14 different stations to be completed in 20 minutes. To solve the problems presented the teams had to put their heads together and really work as one.
“We have really good teamwork. What we did was to split responsibilities and two of us focused on searching through the information while the other two worked on the truck,” adds Andreas.
This year’s VISTA competition has involved 13,500 participants from 70 countries. The international aspect is important to Volvo Trucks and the amount of knowledge possessed by the mechanics is truly awe-inspiring.
“We usually say that the competition represents 300,000 hours of education, but I believe that it is more like 500,00,” said Johanna Lundberg, Executive Project Manager for VISTA.
“It is impossible to know everything. So I think the reason we won is due to our teamwork. We have trained on some spare time, but mainly I think we learn by doing this every day in the workshop,” said Andreas Redl, who believes that the VISTA competition is important for the entire workshop and that all mechanics should join, even if they are new. This year they had five different teams in the competition.
“It is a good way to face problems you don’t come across in every day work, so you learn new things. And it is also a lot of fun, not just the competition, but also all the things surrounding it. We went on an adventure day, did skeet shooting and things like that. It was great, although the weather could have been better. Most fun was winning though.”
