SERVICE NEWSLETTER PARTS Issue 40: May 2016 … May.pdf · 2016-05-20 · The Service Newsletter is a monthly publication that shares information such as team ... Detergents are a

SERVICE NEWSLETTERIssue 40: May 2016

Welcome to the 2016 Service Newsletter from Electrolux Major Appliances International (EMAI).

The Service Newsletter is a monthly publication that shares information such as team news, servicing appliances, success stories, interesting facts as well as some history about Electrolux.

In this Issue:

• A Cleaner World Take a peek at the history of soaps and detergents and how their chemistry and composi- tions affect our near and far environments today.• Information is Key See how the information you provide enables us to help you with service issues.

We welcome your comments and contributions.

Sincerely,

Your Electrolux After Sales Support Team

PARTSSERVICE


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A Cleaner World

Detergents are a part of our daily lives, yet they are often misunderstood. Several types of cleaning agents are called detergents. They perform similar functions, but they can be of very different composition. We hear of dish detergent, laundry detergent, and there are even petrol additives that are called detergents. But this article will focus on two types of cleaning compounds: Laundry Detergent and Automatic Dishwasher detergent.

From the Ages

Historians tell us that soaps have been used for at least 5000 years. The discovery of soap may have been accidental. Soaps are commonly made from animal fats combined with plant ashes. Some theories hold that fats from animal preparation for food that combined with ashes were discovered to help cleaning.

Because of its abundance in most places in the world, water is commonly used in clean-ing processes. Water has a characteristic that has been named surface tension. Surface tension is what allows water to form in drops on a countertop or another horizontal sur-face. If the water did not have this property, the fluid would spread out in a microscopic layer. This property reduces the ability of water to be absorbed into garments.


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One part of a detergent’s action is to reduce the surface tension of water so that it can more easily be absorbed by cloth. Surfactants are the elements in a detergent that reduce the surface tension of water. Surfactants can be divided into four major categories, depending on their ionic properties. They are:

1. Anionic. Negatively charged particles

2. Cationic. Positively charged particles

3. Nonionic. Neutral electrical charge

4. Amphoteric. Can have negative or positively charged particles.

Surfactants also help loosen soils from garments and hold soils in the water solution so they are not redeposited on the garments. Since the soils that need to be re-moved can be varied, a combination of these surfactants are used to make the deter-gents effective on a broad range of soils.

While detergent is commonly referred to as a soap, there is a distinction between soaps and modern detergent. Traditional soaps were made by boiling animal fats with a strong alkali. Most modern detergents replace the animal fats with petroleum distil-lates.

Detergents produced until the early 1970s had higher concentrations of phosphates. The phosphates are refer to as “builders” in detergents. They help the surfactant be more effective and assist in keeping the soil in solution in the water. Phosphates are a plant nutrient. The growth of home washing machines in the 1960s and 1970s caused significant amounts of phosphates to be flushed into waterways and the Oceans. These nutrients stimulated the growth of red algae. The red algae consumed oxygen from seawater. The low oxygen seawater lead to large fish kills. The lack of oxygen in the water caused the fish to experience something similar to suffocation. As a result, phosphates were greatly reduced in laundry detergents and over time the seas returned to their previous state.

The chemistry and composition of modern detergents are too varied and complex to be fully examined here. Instead we will focus on their use.


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Some people say it is human nature to think that if a little is good, more is better. This is not always the case, particularly with laundry detergents. The amount of detergent required for thorough cleaning varies based on many factors including,

1. Mineral content of the wash water. “Hard” water that contains higher concentrations of calcium or magnesium carbonates reduce the effectiveness of detergents.2. Load size.3. Washing machine configuration or design.4. Soil level and composition.5. Water temperature.6. Garment composition.

The manufacturers of detergents make recommendations for the amount of detergent to use. In general, those recommendations are generous. The manufacturer has a financial incentive to encourage you to use the detergent as quickly as possible. They are anxious for you to empty the package and purchase its replacement.

Using too much detergent can be harmful to the washing machine, the garments and even to those who wear the garments. Detergents have many components, and when the detergent is used in excess, buildup can form inside the tub. These deposits serve as nutrients for bacteria. The bacteria can cause discoloration and odor inside the washer.

Additionally, if too much detergent is used in a front load washer, it is possible that deter-gent in the form of foam can come in contact with the bearings. Over time, the detergent will wash the lubricants out of the bearings and accelerate the wear of those bearings. Once the bearings fail, they can become noisy, and eventually as the bearing elements are erod-ed, the bearing becomes loose, allowing the inner basket to come in contact with the outer tub.

Garments can be affected by excess detergent by allowing detergent to remain in the gar-ments. This accumulation can cause the garments to appear old and faded.

Residual detergent in garments can cause skin irritation for the wearer. Itchy rashes can be the result of having detergent in constant contact with the skin.


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Automatic Dishwashing Detergent

The action of automatic dishwashers is greatly misunderstood. Many believe that the spray inside the dishwasher works like a pressure washer, blasting the food particles off of the dishes and silverware. We know this is not true. We know the water inside the dishwasher rains down across the dishes to wash the food particles from the surfaces. Since the washing action is so gentle, it is permissible to place fine china and crystal glasses in a dishwasher with complete confidence that these delicate pieces will not be harmed.

The detergent used in our dishwashers is carefully formulated to give excellent clean-ing performance with the gentle application of water. Enzymes in the detergent become active in the water. These enzymes clean the dishes by breaking down the food particles that have adhered to the dishes, silverware, glasses and cooking vessels. The foods we enjoy are varied in their composition. As such, the detergent mush have a broad variety of cleaners to be able to safely remove remnants of dairy, animal fats, vegetable oils, and the full range of foods we enjoy.

Automatic dishwashing detergent has a major distinction from dishwashing liquid nor-mally used to hand wash dishes. Automatic dishwashing detergent is a lower sudsing detergent. If hand dishwashing liquid is used in an automatic dishwasher, the spray arms will very quickly fill the dishwasher with foam. The foam will leak out past the door gaskets. The foam will also allow so much air to be trapped inside the water that the wash pump cannot move enough fluid to perform any cleaning.

So the last word on detergent is to use the detergent that is formulated for the appli-ance you are using, in an amount that is appropriate for the job to be done.


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Information is Key

This article is a revision of an article we first published in July of 2015. The service report form has been finalized and tested and is ready for use. You will find the form attached to this newsletter.

One of the value added services that we provide to distributors is technical support. Electrolux always seeks to bring new and relevant products to the marketplace which may contain previously unseen technology. This is a good thing for business but it presents several challenges.

The first challenge is that new products can develop problems that were not encoun-tered during design and testing even though we simulate market conditions as ac-curately as possible. The environment in which a product is used, and the manner in which it is used, can cause products to perform differently.

The second challenge is keeping field service technicians informed about new con-trols, new operating criteria, and new diagnostic procedures.

Sometimes this creates the need for distributors to ask for technical support. We are glad to provide technical support, and many times we are aware of issues you are experiencing. At other times, a problem may be new, and none of us in aftersales has experience with this particular problem. At that time we in turn contact the engineer-ing team that developed the product in question.

The engineering teams are always very busy designing the new products we will bring to market, and refining our existing products to make them more efficient and reli-able.

When we contact these engineers, we wish to make the best use of their time. To do this, it is very important that we provide complete information to the engineer to help them determine if the problem is a small incidence or if the problem could be present across the product line.

If we are to provide complete and detailed information to the engineers, we need to receive complete and detailed information from you. This is certainly a case where more information is better. To help with the collection of data, we have designed a form to remind what data is essential. The form will be sent as a template which will allow you to fill in the fields on a computer and send the saved file. This same form can also be used to report new problems for which you have found solutions. This can help us to improve the design of the product, which becomes a benefit for us all.


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The service report form was created in Microsoft Excel, and functions best within that program. The report form has a macro embedded. The purpose of the macro is to cre-ate the file name when the report is complete. This file name format has been chosen to allow easy sorting of reports, and will allow quick retrieval. The file naming format is Model Number_Serial Number.xlsm.

The simplest way to use the form is to create a file on your computer hard drive for Electrolux Service Reports.


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The first information we seek is to identify you and your company, which location, and the name of the individual who is making the report. This will allow us to contact you quickly in the event additional information is required.

The next group of information relates to the product. The form is designed to be filed as a single form per appliance. Even if you have multiple appliances of the same model, please complete one form per unit affected. Please always obtain the model and serial number from the label on the product. On many of our products, the model number on the label has an engineering digit at the end of the model number. This engineering digit is critical for providing the best information to the engineers. The correct and complete serial num-ber is also important for understanding exactly when the product was produced.

The next area of the report is where we ask your technician to be our ears, eyes, nose and hands. Since we are not able to attend every service visit, we depend on information from the consumer, as well as what is observed by the technician. The customer and technician are sensitive to sound, smell and temperature, and can hear or feel vibration. Your obser-vations can help us to understand what we cannot experience.


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The next section asks what corrective actions have been used to solve the problem. Not all corrective actions will be successful, but when you do find a solution to a problem, please share it with us.


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The final section of the form is a reminder about photographs and videos. Whoever said a picture is worth a thousand words was on the right track, but much depends on the qual-ity of the photo. It is up to the judgment of the technician whether a video is more infor-mative, or if still photos are adequate to illustrate the problem.

When making photographs, shots from two or more angles are helpful. When the techni-cian is with the product in question, the technician has the benefit of seeing the product from multiple angles and under different lighting conditions. The technician is able to take in a wealth of information from the continuous image of the product. When we try to see the same thing through photographs, we are limited to several brief slices of time when the image is captured.

One close up photo of the object from one or two angles is helpful, as well as a full view of the product, and in some cases, from more than one side of the product. Again, nu-merous photos are a better situation than too few.

If the number of photographs becomes too large to send through email, contact service support at [email protected] for an alternative method for transferring the image files. We have established an FTP file transfer site for the purpose of exchanging large files.

Once all fields have been completed, close the file and the macro in the spreadsheet should save the document in the same directory where you saved the form. In this case this file name would be MUFF21V9HW4_WB43222993.xlsm


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The failed component in this example is easily diagnosed by a technician who under-stands the operation of a frost-free freezer. These conditions were used only as an ex-ample, as you would not require any assistance from us for such a routine failure.

The overall goal of this form is to save time and to help gather all information needed to find solutions to unusual problems. We hope it will be a good tool for you.


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Familiar Images in Unfamiliar Places

While Joe Takhar and Tom Snuggs were traveling in the Middle East last month, they encountered the familiar image of our EMAI newsletter at one of our distributors’ service shop bulletin boards. It certainly felt satisfying to see that our service tips are of good use to our distributors and are being so visibly displayed and valued.


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Feedback

Did you like our newsletter? Any thoughts that you would like to share with us? What kind of articles would you like to see in the future editions of the service newsletter?

We value your opinion and we would love to hear from you. Please send your feed-back to [email protected] or [email protected]

Documents

SERVICE NEWSLETTER PARTS Issue 40: May 2016 … May.pdf · 2016-05-20 · The Service Newsletter is a monthly publication that shares information such as team ... Detergents are a