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Komatsu Announces 13th Annual Komatsu Advanced Technician Competition (KATC)
February 21st, 2009 by moresnow | Filed under Backhoe, Bulldozer, Excavator.Komatsu’s top field and service technicians travel to Cartersville, GA, to compete in week-long competitions involving equipment diagnostics and troubleshooting
The 13th annual Komatsu Advanced Technician Competition (KATC) to be held at its Training and Demonstration Facility in Cartersville, Georgia, the week of March 2 through March 5, 2009.
KATC is an event where Komatsu Equipment Distributors across North America send their top field and service technicians to Komatsu’s North American Training and Demonstration Facility. The participants compete in a week-long series of individual and team events that will test their diagnostic, technical and troubleshooting skills on a variety of Komatsu’s compact and construction equipment.
“This event has grown every year in terms of pieces of equipment as well as participants and vendors,” says Wade Archer, Technical Training Instructor at the Cartersville Facility and Director of the KATC program. “This year we are proud to have a total of eight machine categories. Many of these technicians have already won internal competitions at their respective distributorships so this competition will produce the best of the best.”
For the competition, each machine is programmed with two problems or “bugs” for technicians to identify, troubleshoot and share their proposed solution with on-site judges. The contestants are not only judged on whether they correctly diagnose the problems, but also their ability to follow proper safety procedures, their ability to utilize the available literature and diagnostic tools, as well as the questions they ask the judges.
Another facet to the competition is the Team Challenge. While contestants know weeks in advance which machines they will troubleshoot in the individual competitions, the particular machine they must work on as a team is a surprise. The “Mystery Machine Competition” tests not only their ability to diagnose and solve problems, but also their ability to communicate and work together.
“Komatsu’s goal is to encourage technicians to improve their skill levels because, in the end, that improvement will benefit everyone from the technicians to their distributors and ultimately, the end users, our customers,” says Archer. “It’s our hope the technician’s will apply their KATC training and diagnostic skills in the workplace to keep the customers downtime to a minimum.”
For more information on KATC and Komatsu’s Training Facility please visit the website at www.kactraining.com/atc.
Komatsu America Corp. is a U.S. subsidiary of Komatsu Ltd. which is the world’s second largest manufacturer and supplier of construction, mining and compact construction equipment. Through its distributor network, Komatsu offers a state-of-the-art parts and service program to support the equipment. Komatsu has proudly been providing high-quality reliable products for nearly a century. Visit the website at www.komatsuamerica.com for more information.
