Scania New Zealand’s champion service team has placed second in the Top Team World Finals in Södertälje, Sweden.
The ‘Cog Swappers’ took home more than NZ$50,000 in prize money, just shy of first place taken out by Scania Germany, with Scania Brazil placing third.
The New Zealand team was of one of 12 Scania service teams from around the world that qualified through a series of national and regional competitions to compete at the eleventh international Top Team World Finals.
Cog Swappers’ team coach Russell Dixon says the team is very pleased and satisfied with the final result.
“We thoroughly enjoyed the experience and the chance to compete against the best Scania service teams in the world.”
The first day of competition saw 12 teams compete for just four places in the livestreamed ‘Super Final’ set for the following day.
“There was intense pressure in the initial rounds with each team striving for a place,” says Dixon. “The announcement of the results saw us qualify – goal achieved!”
Dixon says the next day dawned with a feeling of ‘what can we achieve?’ and ‘are we good enough to go all the way?’
The remaining four teams were greeted by a glare of bright lights at the World Final live-set for the final showdown.
“The super final event was a blur, very intense, exciting, and filled with pressure. It was the perfect end to our Top Team campaign which was a fantastic experience for us, writing the first page in Scania New Zealand Top Team history.”
“The Cog Swappers put in a huge amount of hard work preparing for the regional and world finals, proving that teams that work hard and prepare well, achieve results,” says Dixon.
From the start of 2020, about 8,000 participants from 70 markets around the world completed Scania’s 100 points theory test. The best national teams competed in national finals to qualify for regional finals.
From each of the six regions, the two best teams met in Södertälje for the Top Team World Finals. Out of the 12 teams to compete in the semi-finals, the four best teams competed in the Super Finals where first, second and third places were awarded in Sweden.
The Top Team competition format is designed around daily work patterns with the main objective being to satisfy the needs of the customer.
Teams of five are required to complete five practical work stations each with a 20 minutes time limit such as diagnosing and correctly fixing a fault in the EBS system on a vehicle, including identifying and ordering correct replacement parts with correct part numbers, answering theory based questions associated with the task and using Scania workshop support programs.
