At Van der Valk Solar Systems, we are very proud of our systems. They are of extremely good quality, have few parts, are quickly and easily installed, made in the Netherlands, and have successfully passed various tests. But we are proudest of our colleagues. Customers and installers talk to our Sales team every day, are shown drawings done by our Project Engineers, and read the newsletter and social media posts from the Marketing team. But the employees that everyone is involved with indirectly are our colleagues in the factory, warehouse and transport. They ensure that our products are manufactured and arrive on time. The owner, Hans van der Valk, is fond of saying, "Everything leaving our premises must score 10 out of 10, a 9 is too low". Take a peek behind the scenes in our production!
Ferat is Machine Operator and his favourite aspect of the work is the variety. Through self-developed training courses, you can learn to operate every machine. This means jobs can be rotated within a team and the knowledge shared.
Railison is standing here with a broad smile and a support in his hands. He ensures that the aluminium that arrives here is transformed into parts for our systems. Along with products for Solar, he also makes products for Horti-tak, our sister company. We feel that it is important to apply what has been learned in one company to the other. After all, we have been supplying systems since 1963! And we are still utilising that knowledge because we are a committed and enterprising family-run concern.
Shant is standing next to one of our production machines and showing us two components of our clamps. They are applied to our clamps for flat and pitched roofs. This is something that we have thought about carefully. It makes life easier for us and for the installer. Once you are familiar with the installation of our systems, you are able to work with another system just as easily! Together with his colleagues, Shant ensures that a range of parts can be produced.
Here is the assembly department with our permanent team. This is a rather deceptive picture because we outsource the majority of our assembly work to various sheltered workshops nearby. There the small components are pre-mounted, so the installer on the roof can get to work with fewer concerns to worry about. Our systems are well-known for the speed and ease of their installation, with the fewest possible parts. That is partly due to these gentlemen and the workers in the sheltered workshops!
This is Arkadiusz (we call him Arek) on the forklift truck. He ensures that all finished products from the different sections are neatly stored. When it is time to bring the products to our storage location in Den Hoorn, he also loads the trucks. Watch him in action here.
This is Tim, Logistics Team leader. He forms an important link between the factory in Monster and the Solar warehouse in Den Hoorn. Because the pressure was becoming excessive in Monster (regarding office space, warehouse and number of trucks), it was decided to open another location. Tim coordinates the timely arrival in Den Hoorn of the products created in Monster, so we can distribute them from there throughout Europe on time.
We finish off with the jack-of-all-trades Nick. As Junior Service Engineer he can be found pretty much anywhere in the building and also assists regularly in Den Hoorn. Sometimes he is soldering at a workbench, see here. On other days he does odd jobs outside or fixes something in the office. One thing is certain, he is never bored with two locations to work at!
This was a very small sample of the colleagues in our production in Monster. Would you like a more extensive tour? Then follow a training course in the ValkAcademy! For more information about our solar mounting systems, please contact us at +31 (0)174 – 25 49 99 or send an e-mail to sales@valksolarsystems.com.