This is Why GARDENA Relies on ZwickRoell for Quality Testing
As a leading European brand for gardening enthusiasts, GARDENA offers high-quality tools in an extensive product portfolio. In order to consistently guarantee the high quality standards for garden tools, the lab performs extensive mechanical tests, including tensile, compression, and flexure tests. For these tests, GARDENA has relied on ZwickRoell machines for more than 25 years. Furthermore, the level of customer service provided by the testing machine manufacturer continues to convince GARDENA.
GARDENA and their brand promise
Both garden professionals and amateur gardeners know how important high-quality tools are when gardening: dull hedge clippers and planting shovels that break in the hard ground can be aggravating and signs of poor quality. That is why, explains Uwe Lamparter, Head of Competence Center Quality Labs at GARDENA, the brand stands for the following promise to our customers: “Anyone who buys one of our products can expect the product to be resilient, to always function properly, and to have a long service life. It is therefore worth buying tools from a trusted brand, as this is the only way to enjoy them for the longterm.”
GARDENA is the leading brand for first-class garden tools in Europe and is represented in more than 100 countries worldwide. The company, based in Ulm, Germany offers a complete range of products for irrigation, lawn care, tree and shrub care and soil preparation. Since 2007, GARDENA has been a member of the Husqvarna Group and an independent division. In order to consistently ensure the high quality of their products—the brand offers a 25-year guarantee on mechanical shears, for example—various fatigue tests are carried out on the garden tools in the laboratory in Ulm’s Danube Valley, applying maximum stress.
GARDENA: deliver quality that meets customer expectations
“Our task—and challenge—is to ensure that at the end of the design and manufacturing processes we deliver high-quality products that fully meet customer expectations. From our end, this demands constant evaluation of defined quality requirement characteristics, starting with the development phase through to series production, and their degree of fulfillment. At the same time, the garden tool manufacturer is also largely focusing on sustainability. Among other things, a determination is made on how long products will last by subjecting the corresponding (sustainable) materials to maximum forces in the testing lab.
Materials testing machine Z050 for tensile, compression, and flexure tests
Currently, GARDENA is testing their various garden products with a Z050 from ZwickRoell. The garden tools and products are put to the test using tensile, compression and flexure tests to determine material characteristics and, if necessary, make adjustments in terms of quality. Advantages of the current testing machine: The Z050 is universally applicable and offers a high level of operating convenience for a wide variety of tests. Thanks to its mechanical modularity, the testing system can also be expanded with customer-specific fixtures. This means that specimen grips and test tools can be changed quickly, and a wide variety of tests can be carried out with the same machine, allowing fast and extremely flexible adaptation to the task at hand. And the intuitive testXpert testing software also helps to ensure that tests at GARDENA can be carried out in a standard-compliant manner at all times.
Lamparter: “In our quality laboratory in Ulm, we developed test programs for every product group. We want rapid and practical results for quality assessment purposes, so we use standardized tests in which we can simulate the behavior of a product in use within a very short time and on the basis of many years of experience and comparison with customer use.”
ZwickRoell: Service support is quick and hassle-free
The testing lab personnel at GARDENA not only appreciates the ZwickRoell machine quality and high level of user-friendliness when it comes to daily use of the equipment, the ZwickRoell Service team also greatly contributes to the high level of satisfaction and longterm partnership with rapid response times—which of course, are also made possible through the close proximity of the two Ulm-based companies. Lamparter: “We are extremely happy with the rapid assistance ZwickRoell provides when we are faced with a challenge in the testing lab. Recently, we thought that measurement sensor in our machine was defective. We took it to ZwickRoell for calibration and within a day the problem was solved, enabling us to meet time-critical measurement series deadlines.” Furthermore Lamparter adds: “We greatly value the fact that we receive help quickly when we have questions and that things can sometimes be settled through the most direct route. ZwickRoell supports us in meeting our quality promise, and they have done so for nearly a quarter of a century.“
Photos: GARDENA
