Interview - Gemba Service

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Interview with Elwin de Man

“It feels good to solve something quickly”

Do you have a question or need help from Gemba? Then you can contact Elwin de Man. Because he is one of the people behind our service desk. How does Elwin help you further? And what makes his work at Gemba so enjoyable? We ask him.

March 14, 2025 • 7 minutes read

How long have you been working at Gemba?

“A year and a half, I’m starting to feel like part of the furniture.”

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What exactly do you do?

“As a service desk employee, I am the first point of contact for customers. We answer the phone and help with malfunctions. If we can’t figure it out, we ask someone from consultancy or operations to help, but we prefer not to. Because in addition to our customers, we also want to relieve our colleagues. Externally, we are the point of contact and calling card for Gemba, internally a kind of filter. It is rewarding work. If I solve something quickly, it feels good. It is still a challenge now, I have to learn a lot. But little by little it is starting to come together.”

What is the best thing you have done at Gemba?

“Just when I was learning SQL, a service request came in for a customer’s database. So I could get started right away. Before I pressed the button, I checked with colleagues to make sure everything was correct. It’s nice to put what you learn into practice right away, you immediately see the usefulness of it and your knowledge stays with you longer. It gives context when customers tell you what doesn’t work and why, for me it is necessary to see the bigger picture. That also helps with subsequent service requests, you can get a better idea of what something means to a customer.”

Why do you enjoy working at Gemba?

| Do you have an idea? Go for it!
“The culture and people appeal to me. I was with the police, it’s very different there. There are 65,000 people working there, which makes it slow and sluggish. At Gemba we are with 40 people. With a small group, the dynamics are different. Everyone has their own role, but the goal is the same: to create a good IBM Maximo environment for customers together. That also happens in a fun way. At Gemba, it’s all about the people, you have to enjoy yourself. Because you create a good product with craftsmanship and dedicated people. You can also feel free to stand out from the crowd. Do you have an idea? Go for it! That is the norm at Gemba and I feel comfortable with that.”

What was your most memorable Gemba outing?

“Our trip to Seville for Gemba’s 25th anniversary, I hadn’t been working there that long then. The setting, the atmosphere, the people: it was great. On the back of a colleague on a scooter, I’ve never been so scared in 16 years with the police! Those things go very fast and I could barely stand on the scooter with one and a half feet. But I also enjoyed the other outings so far, such as the tour at Grolsch. When you walk along such a production line, you immediately wonder how they do it with maintenance. You suddenly look at it very differently.”

How do you see the future?

“I am looking forward to learning a lot and helping to further improve the service desk. To take more work off the hands of operations, we want to bring in more knowledge and work more proactively, for example. For example, we have now agreed that we will immediately call from the service desk if there are malfunctions that the fault service is going to handle, as a kind of small customer satisfaction survey. For the time being, I see enough challenge. I don’t regret for a day that I left the police and chose Gemba. When I speak to former colleagues who are not satisfied with their work, I always say that we are still looking for people here.”

Want to know more?

Want to know more about the work of our service desk?

Please contact us via info@gemba.nl or call 020 – 482 29 29.

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