When Greg Dupree, vice president of O.J. Dupree Co., Kansas City, Mo., began routine service of an air handling unit for Medical Plaza Partners in Kansas City, he had no idea he would become acquainted with Cutler-Hammer/Eaton's emergency service. Work on the unit had been scheduled for a Friday evening and Saturday at the medical building. Dupree, whose company sells and services adjustable frequency drives, as well as other energy-saving equipment, was replacing the electronics in the unit when he discovered a bad isolator contact. With the depth limitation in the existing cabinet, he was concerned they were going to be in trouble if they couldn't replace it with the same contact model, but he was not comfortable continuing with the job until he replaced the contact.

"Given that we were trying to use their existing enclosure, we were somewhat limited in space," Dupree says. "But we really didn't want to use an alternative manufacturer on the contact." At 5 p.m. on Saturday, Dupree called Western Extralite, Kansas City, and told John Isenberg, Extralite's vice president of sales and marketing, that he needed a size 4 contact immediately--Plaza Medical Partners had a surgery scheduled for Monday morning. Isenberg didn't have the part in stock, so he called Pittsburgh, Pa.-based Cutler-Hammer's after-hours emergency 800 number and left a message. Within 15 minutes Chris Seguin from Cutler-Hammer's Pittsburgh office had called Isenberg back to let him know he was working on the problem. Less than four hours later, Seguin called Isenberg again to tell him the part would be on a plane arriving in Kansas City at 10:30 Sunday morning. Keith Uhrmacher of Medical Plaza Partners picked the part up at the airport, and it was installed a few hours later.

Paul Esterheld, Cutler-Hammer's customer support and logistics manager, says when someone phones in on their emergency number, a sales engineer on call after normal working hours, weekends and holidays is paged to handle it. Esterheld says they have responded to more than 350 calls on the number in the past year. Urmacher of Medical Plaza Partners says he would have had a lot of unhappy tenants if Western Extralite and Cutler-Hammer hadn't come through.

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