Seven teams from across the Scania network have gone head-to-head over the weekend, vying for a place at the truck manufacturer’s global Top Team competition, which is held every two years.
The competition’s Australia national finals were recently held at the Campbellfield Dealer Support Centre in Melbourne.
Seven teams from across the Scania network that had graduated from earlier rounds battled it out for the opportunity to represent Australia at the Bangkok regional finals of Scania’s global competition.
The Top Team Challenge offers Scania’s 1600 global workshops the opportunity to field teams to compete, with national and regional rounds sifting the 12 best teams who come together in Sweden to fight for glory.
Scania Australia has fielded global winning teams from its Prestons NSW branch in 2011 and 2013, with a hotly contested second spot placing in 2015.
For the first time this year, the Australian National Finals included a technical challenge involving the very first Battery Electric Scania truck to arrive in Australia, a vehicle not yet released onto the road.
The Top Team challenge became an opportunity to put theory and training to the test.
The seven teams were drawn from Scania company-owned branches in Victoria, South Australia, Queensland and three from NSW.
Following many hours of pre-finals preparation on the books and in the workshop, the teams assembled on Saturday September 4 to battle it out.
Against-the-clock fault finding and diagnosis took place on a variety of Scania products, from an industrial and marine engine to truck and bus systems as well as the BEV, and included mechanical, electrical and procedural tests.
From the seven teams, the ‘Dandenong AINACS’ emerged victorious, with the ‘Prestons Pups’ as runners up, followed closely by ‘Eastern Creek Team 1’.
The team from Dandenong will travel to Bangkok to compete in the Asian regional finals. From there, two teams will progress to Sweden for the global finals.
“Teamwork is an essential foundation of our workshop efficiency, and Top Team sparks cross functional relationships that endure long after the competition, and allow us to function more smoothly in the pursuit of delivering enhanced customer uptime,” said Manfred Streit, managing director for Scania Australia.
“Top Team encourages workshop colleagues to form strong bonds and to believe in themselves and each other, which makes for a more harmonious working environment on many levels, and it also allows older and younger colleagues to integrate well, so the mentoring process is further enhanced.”
The victorious Dandenong AINACS (‘Scania’ reversed) team comprised Chris Chilver (captain), Frank Jurinec, Cooper Castricum, Danny Manak, and Michael Petersen.
“It was nice to finally win,” Chilver said. “We have been runners-up several times before, and there was some pressure on us, so we’re very happy to take the win. We didn’t start very well, but we came home very strongly and teamwork and believing in ourselves got us over the line.”