When an expensive piece of construction machinery is out of action due to the failure of a seal in one of its hydraulic cylinders, the priority is to get the replacement seal to the repair shop as quickly as possible. Our Hercules business has built its business model to respond to this customer requirement by offering a responsive, next day delivery service for these time critical items.

Hercules holds inventory in its main Clearwater warehouse of ca. 30,000 different seals and seal kits, used in more than 2,000 equipment models produced by over a hundred mobile machinery OEMs. Over the last three years, Hercules has invested over US$2m in warehouse automation and carousel systems and warehouse management software which ensure that we can maintain the highest levels of product availability, service quality and cost-efficiency. We can receive orders up until 8pm in the evening and with a 95% certainty level, will have the product in stock. We then pick, pack and dispatch the order for overnight delivery using Fedex and UPS. We can have the product to the customer's repair shop by 10.30am the next day, anywhere in the US.

In cases when we do not have the specific seal in stock, we are also able to offer our Seals-on-Demand service where we custom machine non-standard and out-of-production seals as a service to our customers.

Product selection is made very straightforward for customers by presenting the seals and seal kits in a range of catalogues and CDs tailored to the customers' needs. A simple decision logic leads from the original equipment manufacturer, to the model number to the individual cylinder and finally to the Hercules product part number. This logic lends itself to e-commerce and we offer a sophisticated web based ordering service where preferred by the customer.

	Customer service
	Hercules' catalogues and web-site give access to a range of ca. 40,000 seals and seal kits for most leading brands of heavy mobile machinery

A hospital pathology laboratory needs to be set up to carry out a broad range of tests on blood, tissue and other samples to meet the needs of all the different medical disciplines and clinical departments. A major laboratory may carry out tens of thousands of tests per day, of which the majority will be carried out on major automated chemistry, haematology or immunoassay-chemistry systems supplied by one of the major clinical diagnostic instrument manufacturers.

In addition to these more routine tests, the laboratory will need to be equipped to carry out a range of more specialised tests, each requiring their own custom designed instruments and associated reagents and test kits. These will cover specialised applications from a variety of laboratory disciplines including infectious disease, auto-immunity, allergy, protein testing, molecular biology and cellular pathology.

Somagen, our clinical diagnostics business in Canada, does not just supply the products to the laboratories, but rather offers a full solutions capability. Under the terms of multi-year contracts, we provide the instruments to our customers and commit to service and maintain them. We then generate revenues by supplying the reagents and test kit consumables while providing technical service and support as required over the contract period.

Our sales and product application staff are highly qualified specialists who have the detailed technical knowledge to help laboratory technologists in establishing test procedures and to support laboratory staff in the interpretation and utilisation of results.

We offer full service solutions as the exclusive representative in Canada for a number of carefully selected, high quality, medium sized manufacturers based in the US, Europe and Japan.

	Technical support
	Somagen's specialists help laboratory technologists to establish test procedures and interpret results

When a Formula 1 team is seeking to design and build a car that will out-perform its rivals, it requires supply chain partners that can match its exacting standards.

In a typical chassis harness set for a Formula 1 car, there will be in excess of 1,000 metres of high performance wiring, over 200 individual interconnect components, including connectors, sensors, shrink fit tubing, moulded shapes and splices, as well as lacing, braiding and identification products.

Our IS-Group businesses have designed their business models to be able to supply to their customers from stock, the full range of wiring and harness components that they require. They have gone further in investing in technical staff who work closely with the customers' engineers to design-in products to provide the required solution. Investment has also been made in equipment and processes to be able to offer a range of value-added services including:

• Connector assembly
• Sleeve marking
• Prototyping of customised cables
• Cut-to-length tubing
• Kitting and Kan-Ban supply

The IS-Group works closely with customers to understand their requirements and to offer the products in the most user-friendly way. For the Formula 1 Motorsport teams, in addition to supplying products to the harness assemblers, kits of high performance fasteners are supplied to engine builders so that the engines (block, pump, sump etc.) can be built and rebuilt with the most efficient use of the engineer's time.

	Added value services
	Kits of components provided to a leading F1 Motorsport team for use on race-day.