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6
B
eing a leader in the equip-
ment industry requires more
than great equipment. We
depend heavily on the people who
operate and service our equipment.
That’s why we have a long-standing
commitment to training and education,
to help ensure that customers are as
comfortable and knowledgeable about
equipment as they can be.
One of the many popular things we
offer in our training spectrum is Toro’s
Customer Factory Service Education
Program, or as it’s more commonly
known, “Factory Service School.” Our
Factory Service School is a three-day
session held at Toro’s Training Center
in Bloomington, Minnesota, including
a visit to our assembly facility at
Tomah, Wisconsin. Designed primarily
for technicians, the guests at Factory
Service School attend a variety of help-
ful seminars that address issues of con-
cern to them and the industry. They
also get unique
opportunities to
meet other techni-
cal professionals
from around the
country and
exchange ideas.
Created over 20
years ago to pro-
vide training for
distributors, Toro’s
Factory Service
Schools have since
been expanded to
include technicians
from golf courses, sports facilities and
municipalities. Currently Toro offers
these end-user Factory Service School
sessions about five times a year.
Useful Information
The Factory Service School program
usually starts on a Sunday night with a
welcoming get-acquainted reception.
Then over the next three days, “stu-
dents” of Factory Service School attend
informational tours, presentations and
hands-on sessions addressing such help-
ful topics as cutting unit adjustments,
hydraulics, electrical systems, equip-
ment maintenance, diagnostics and
troubleshooting.
“It was very informative,” says Rick
Paré, Equipment Manager at Eagle
Crest Resort in Redmond, Oregon. He
attended Factory Service School this
past September. “Training is beneficial
for everybody. You always like to see
new updates and new innovations that
are coming along. The mere fact that
greens are so fast and are cut so short
now, we’ve got to be on our toes all the
time.”
In addition to the training classes
and seminars themselves, Paré enjoyed
the chance to swap notes and tips with
the technicians he met there.
“One person’s attitude on how to
maintain a piece of equipment differs
from another’s,” he adds. “Whenever
you get together with a bunch of tech-
nicians or superintendents, you always
talk about what
works for you and
what doesn’t.”
“When you hear
someone else with
a situation similar
to yours, it helps,”
agrees Michael
Koopman, another
technician who
attended Factory
Service School last
year. Koopman is
the Equipment
Manager at Old
Collier Golf Club in Naples, Florida.
“It was geared more for education,
but they gave us the option of giving
our feedback,” he says about Factory
Service School. “I think one of the best
things—and something that people are
really interested in—is when they
brought the engineers in and asked if
we had any questions for them. That
was on Monday, the first day. Then, if
they couldn’t answer a question, they
said they would get back to us before
we left for home on Wednesday.
“One thing I’ll say,” he adds, “is that
they didn’t run away from someone
who said, ‘Hey, I have a problem with
something.’ They listen to what the
people have to say.”
The chance to meet with Toro engi-
neers and ask them specific questions
has always been one of the most popu-
lar features at Factory Service School.
The technicians in attendance know
their equipment better than anyone,
and Toro appreciates the opportunity to
get first-hand input from people who
put the machines through their paces
every day.
“They asked us if we had any prob-
lems, or if we had any questions we
wanted answered,” Paré says. “I thought
that was good; they were very straight-
forward.”
Customer-Focused
Given the wide range of products
Toro represents, part of the challenge
with any type of training is to make
sure it’s relevant to a particular cus-
tomer, to give him or her the informa-
tion they need most.
“We have two different types of
schools we offer to our customers,”
explains Jim Peterson, Toro’s Education
and Learning Manager in the
Commercial Products Division. “One
has a golf focus and the other has a
grounds focus. So the technical infor-
mation we provide is specific to the
needs of the technician,” he says.
Factory Service School
Toro’s Customer Factory Service Education Program Earns An A+
Toro’s Factory Service School gives equipment man-
agers and technicians hands-on instruction on how
to properly service Toro equipment.
Technicians benefit greatly from the interac-
tion with Toro employees and peers at the
Factory School.