From sixth gear back down to third

The glory years

There was a time when Homan had a good 40 people on the payroll. Plus a whole crew of freelancers helping out with everything we did. Leading in the country. Leading in the industry. We were enormously proud of that crew. Of the people who walked around here.

And what people. Careers of 10, 15, 20, 30 years. And one of even 48 years. Forty-eight years at the same company. That says it all. At one point, 80 percent of our fitters had been with us for more than 25 years.

Full service down to the last detail

Homan has always been the installer, for as long as anyone can remember. We did everything to please the customer. If the customer asked for something, we did it. If they wanted to rent something other than what we had in the range, we adapted. We bought it in. Full service. Everything from A to Z.

Fantastic and wonderful. But it involved an extraordinary amount of work. Because customers become ever more demanding. They set ever higher requirements for the product. And we had to meet them. Because the customer is king. The customer comes first. That will never change.

But we took it very far indeed. We sometimes forgot that too many hours were being invoiced. That hours went into projects that were not really realistic. Projects that were simply pure manual labour.

80% of all funfairs

Take the big funfairs, for example. We ran 80 percent of all funfairs in the Netherlands. The big ones. Some 150 to 160 funfairs a year.

Sometimes four, five, six, seven funfairs at the same time. Without a hitch. Can you begin to grasp what a logistical operation that was? How hard it is to deliver, with a crew like that, at the most bizarre hours? Because that was what the customer wanted.

But we delivered everywhere. Every customer was satisfied. And we were proud of that. We had an enormous crew of people who pulled it off.

Manual labour is dying out

A few years ago I became aware that this was going to become my stumbling block too. Because just try finding people these days who simply want to work with their hands the old-fashioned way. Who still just start at six in the morning. And go home when the job is done, when it is finished.

"Those people are almost gone. They are dying out. Real manual labour, it just is not there any more."

As people left, I made a conscious choice not to replace them. In fact, the people who left at some point, we did not replace them. Finding the right people was no easy task.

We got bigger, better, broader. But ever more people, that is not always easy. So I made a conscious choice to take the manual labour out, really. And to go back to basics.

Back to basics: who are we?

Who are we? What are we? We are the best generator rental company. The quietest. Stabilised. Clean. Green. Sustainable. And now also: fast.

A quote arranged in the blink of an eye. You know where you stand. That is what I wanted to achieve with this. With a very small group of people. A group that can be deployed day and night if need be, but with the right planning we try to arrange it so that it simply fits within normal working hours.

The handbrake

But there was also a danger in that compliment. Because those people were so tremendously attached to the company, they also held on tremendously. To the old. To the familiar. It is understandable, you embrace what you know. And the unknown? That is strange, scary, and you prefer to keep it at arm's length.

We noticed it too. By holding on to the old, we were standing in the way of progress. New technologies? No need, we have been doing it this way for 30 years. Digitalisation? Those lads had only just learned to email and WhatsApp, to exaggerate a little.

"However great the compliment that people work for you for so long, they can also be the handbrake on your organisation."

The ageing workforce as a turning point

Then came the last few years. The ageing workforce. People retired. Took early retirement. Chose other opportunities. Or tried their luck elsewhere. The old guard, people with long careers and decades of experience, slowly but surely left the company.

At first I found that unpleasant. But looking back? This was an enormous blessing for us.

With the departure of the old guard, the handbrake was gone. And the door opened to new technologies.

Alone you go faster

People sometimes say: "Alone you go faster, together you go further." But to be perfectly honest, we experienced the opposite.

Suddenly we noticed that we were doing the same thing with far fewer people. Achieving the same. Only in far less time. In far fewer hours. With all that entails. We got further. Faster. More efficiently.

The Toyota Prius lesson

In the past it was unthinkable. How could we imagine that generators would eventually be replaced by batteries? By hydrogen? Then again, we said the same thing 10, 15 years ago about the first Toyota Prius that appeared on the road.

That Prius was not the prettiest model. But it was the most innovative. And in the end? Look where we are now. How many cars are electric. How much has changed with charging and charging systems. Of course problems have surfaced too, grid congestion and a whole host of other things. But that will right itself in time.

That is what has happened at Homan too.

Knowledge no longer belongs to individuals

Knowledge used to be entrusted to people. To that one technician who had been around for 30 years. Who knew everything about that one generator. Who could advise customers perfectly. Fantastic. Superb. Customer-friendly.

But if you had to wait until that person was available? One day, two days, three days waiting for an answer? That no longer fitted the times.

New technologies are taking over much of what the old guard did. Knowledge is no longer entrusted to people alone, but is now widely accessible to everyone. Found via the keyboard.

That is what we have done with our AI website. That extreme technician on the phone? That knowledge is now in the system. Instantly retrievable. At least as much knowledge, but without the waiting time.

Deliberately shifting down

This was no coincidence. This was a deliberate process. Attrition. Downsizing. Shifting down from sixth gear, the overdrive we were stuck in, back to third.

"Shift down to third gear for a moment, so that in the end you can floor the accelerator."

And that is exactly what we are doing. We are pleased with the developments of the last one or two years. The handbrake is off. The road is open.

What AI does for us now

• Smart quotes in 2 minutesNo more waiting for that one person who knows. The system calculates everything in real time, day and night.
• Predictive maintenancePreventing breakdowns before they happen. Data instead of gut feeling.
• Automated planningFewer kilometres, faster service. Working smart instead of hard.

Clean, green, lean and mean

Back to basics. Fewer people, more results. Fewer kilometres, faster service. Less waiting, more answers. This is not a loss. This is a gain. For us, for our customers, for the environment.

89 years old, younger than ever

Homan has been around since 1937. We have lived through every stage. The rise of diesel. Digitalisation. Learning to email and WhatsApp. Now the AI revolution.

And every time we have adapted. Sometimes painfully. Sometimes with difficulty. But always with an eye on the future.

The handbrake is off. The door is open. The accelerator is ready to be floored.