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Marrakech was a dream, like of 1000 and one nights: a big hustle and bustle, an endlessly big crowd with snake charmers, juggler, music and a lot of food. Drove through Agadir to Guelmin then. This is where the civilisation ends and the steppe begins.

We’re just  getting the car of one participant fixed, the shock absorbers are broken: We drove on the first track with slanting and a river crossing yesterday. Our bus does a good job.

Slept on the estate of an former rallye driver yesterday, Fort bou jerif. Today we have an hop of 200 km from Tantan in southern direction to the Sahara.

Bye for now!

Photo © by Albert Backer

We are on the black continent, more precisely, in Morocco. And this Morocco is fascinating. It’s a mixture between the connection to Europe and the oriental Africa. Most streets are better than we thought, however, this is the first country where I can understand that you drive an SUV, if you’re rich enough.The majority of course, the people without money, drive Mercedes Benz. In all versions. If Cuba is the country for American oldtimers, Morocco is the counterpart for Mercedes. Especially popular are the classic limousines like the W123, the good old 190 D and the 207 busses. The company from Stuttgart should send their marketing department down here – there is no better proof for endurance!

At the moment, we are in Marrakech. We have driven through Tarifa and Fes, the Atlas Mountains – they are, by the way, so high, that at an altitude of over 2000 meters, we drove past snow and had to be careful on the icy streets. This is Africa, too! At the moment, the landscape is pretty diverse. The vegetation (very green in general) seems to change in every bend. There’s everything from mandarin trees to coniferous forests and palm trees.

Tomorrow, on New Year’s Day, we will visit Marrakech. Everybody is looking forward to taste the local cuisine at the main square, the Jemaa el Fna.

Until now, we’re still in the stable part of Africa, with compulsory schooling and an organised life (even though we as Germans need to get used to this type of organisation, but it works). I will keep on reporting about what awaits us further south – more adventures, for sure!

Bye for now, Michael

Most of you probably know our Head of Copywriting Michael Dill, who (among other things) accompanies the videos of „Steinigke on tour“ as a commentator. Well, Michael is now on his way to Africa to take part in the rallye „Dust and Diesel“. As long as his time and the internet connection allow it, he will keep us updated with short extracts along the way.

The start of the rallye is on the 28th of December in Tarifa, Spain. The route leads through Morocco, the western Sahara and Mauritania to Senegal, where „Dust and Diesel“ ends on the 13th of January. Read more »

They are the men with the sharp eyes: The inspectors of our Quality Control department.

When a product sample arrives, it must make its way through this department – only then it can become an article in our range. Additionally, every day more than 40 pallets of goods reach us per container or per post. Our QC department picks at least one piece out of every group of articles for a spot check. Only if the products pass the examination, may they be sold.

The examination is especially important for samples: Most of the products, which are to be traded in the EU, need to carry the CE mark. If a device doesn’t meet all the requirements for safety or quality reasons, it must be improved. Only if a product passes the tests in our QC, it may become an article in our range.

All the packages, which come into the QC department for a spot check, must at first pass a check for the correctness of information: Is the name and description of the article right? Is the right bar code printed on the package? Is the correct serial number assigned to the product? Is the weight of the package properly declared? The employees record the product’s data and unpack it. They evaluate the external appearance before forwarding the product to test their inner values.

There’s a specialist for every kind of product in our QC-workshop: From an engineer to a precision mechanic.

In the Quality Control department, the items have to pass a performance test. This may mean that a lamp must stay in the sauna for some hours: There one can see if the lamp gives up the ghost while working at very high temperatures.

In the workshop, the inspectors open the devices and test their core qualities. They check if the device is constructed properly and – most important – if it meets the requirements, arising from EU regulations and guidelines.

About 25 employees in the QC department see to, that the quality of our products keeps improving. Often you point out imperfections of a product to us. Then our specialists check that article again and perhaps modify it. If similar defects occur frequently, our inspectors search for the cause and forward their results to the supplier, so the product can be reworked. How customer feedback helps us:

Our men with the sharp eyes take your suggestions and keep improving the products. Thank you very much for your support!

Even the best products are faulty sometimes. How annoying, if a device doesn’t work properly! But what a good thing, that Steinigke has a whole department especially for these cases: The service department with integrated workshop to it always tries to provide a quick solution.

Every day, we are dispatching more than 2000 article positions (the article quantities are much more). The response rate is between one and three percent – quite a good rate, but we are always trying to improve our services.

Some of the packages come back to us, because the customer didn’t like the product. Most of them, however, are “problem cases”: A defect occurred, a function of the device failed, or the mounting unit was broken. Read more »