Cummins Case Studies : Another Customer Loses Its Name

TCAP found the Cummins case studies archive, pulled more than 200 customers out of its 464-entry corporate filing cabinet and promptly turned the thing into a fucking bloodbath. Since then, something curious has started happening. Two of the latest Cummins case studies we have examined somehow forgot to name the customer. The latest one practically hands us ZAGRO’s business card anyway. Reactionary Mode appears to be continuing nicely.

Cummins Case Studies Were A Fucking Goldmine

A few months ago, TCAP found one of the most useful cupboards on the Cummins website.

The Cummins case studies archive was not merely a collection of polished success stories. Instead, it was a commercial directory wearing marketing trousers. Hundreds of entries sat there carrying customer names, locations, machinery, applications, project details and cheerful quotes from people delighted to tell Cummins how wonderful Cummins was.

There were 464 case studies in the archive.

So TCAP did the obvious thing.

We went through the fucking lot.

More than 200 customer names came out of that exercise. Customer Corner then stopped being an occasional series and became something closer to an industrial processing line.

Cummins had already established the commercial connection for us. Consequently, all TCAP had to do was walk around the back of the testimonial and see what else was attached to the company smiling beside the engine.

Sometimes there were regulators.

Sometimes there were court cases.

Elsewhere there were pollution records, corruption scandals, discrimination claims, safety failures, procurement disasters, political baggage and corporate family trees with things hanging from the branches that nobody had thought to include in the Cummins brochure.

The case studies were supposed to demonstrate customer confidence.

Instead, they became our fucking address book.

Then Came The Customer Corner Bloodbath

Once TCAP realised what was sitting there, the Cummins customer scrapbook started producing bodies remarkably quickly.

Teck Resources opened one cupboard. Julong Copper Mine opened another. Hamad Medical Corporation took the cheerful world of emergency-power marketing somewhere considerably darker. Kubota brought its own corporate baggage. Other case-study customers led into mining, environmental records, litigation, workplace controversies and enough institutional debris to keep Customer Corner occupied for months.

The method was brutally simple.

Cummins identified the customer and proved the relationship. Its own copy usually explained which engine, generator, component or service had been supplied. Frequently, the customer even provided a glowing testimonial.

Then TCAP checked the rest of the fucking record.

That distinction matters because we did not need to invent relationships or play corporate six-degrees-of-separation. Cummins had already nailed its customers to the wall itself and added captions.

As a result, its wholesome little success-story archive began to resemble a coroner’s shelf.

Every entry had a name.

Every name had somewhere else to look.

Then, rather conveniently, the names started becoming harder to find.

Cummins Case Studies Discover Anonymous Customers

The first especially conspicuous example came from Cummins’ PrevenTech material in the Elko gold-mining region.

That case study was wonderfully specific about almost everything except the identity of the company supposedly benefiting from the miracle.

Cummins talked about nearly 50 connected engines. It identified a QSK60. There was an exhaust-valve problem, a potential $180,000 repair supposedly reduced to around $10,000 and a repair completed in eight hours.

Then came the enormous number.

According to Cummins, avoiding downtime protected somewhere between $800,000 and $1 million per hour of site-wide production value. Sure thing.

Specific engine.

Specific fault.

Very specific repair estimates.

Specific production-value claim.

Yet when it came to the company supposedly losing a million dollars every sixty minutes, Cummins suddenly developed stage fright.

The operator became merely “one customer”.

No mine.

No company.

Crucially, name to put into a search engine.

Naturally, TCAP noticed.

The resulting article, Cummins PrevenTech Elko : The Million-Dollar Valve, turned the anonymity itself into part of the story. After all, enormous financial claims become considerably easier to admire when the organisation behind them remains safely behind the curtain.

That could have been a one-off.

Then Moritz Engelhardt arrived.

Meet The German Customer Cummins Forgot To Name

The latest Cummins case study is called “More than an engine: How Cummins helped turn a complex integration into a successful partnership”.

Once again, the customer apparently has no name.

Cummins describes the business as a German manufacturer specialising in road-rail vehicle conversions. Its team had secured its first project using an American truck chassis, while engineers were integrating specialist equipment and software around a Cummins X15.

There is plenty more detail.

The finished vehicle was in Canada. Meanwhile, the customer’s team remained in Germany. Cummins provided remote engineering support and helped deal with the technical integration.

Then the anonymous corporate mist suddenly acquires a human face.

Moritz Engelhardt appears in the copy.

Moritz explains why his team selected Cummins. He praises the software. Later, he applauds the technical support. Engelhardt even says they would choose Cummins again and recommend the company to their own customers.

At the end, Cummins helpfully prints his name again.

Moritz Engelhardt.

One detail remains mysteriously absent.

His fucking employer.

Apparently Cummins now believes anonymity consists of removing the company name while leaving the employee standing under a spotlight holding his business card.

Unfortunately, the internet continues to contain websites.

ZAGRO Finishes The Crossword

ZAGRO Bahn- und Baumaschinen GmbH has a public contact page.

Guess who is on it.

Moritz Engelhardt – Deputy Sales Director.

Meanwhile, ZAGRO describes exactly the sort of business Cummins describes without naming: specialist road-rail vehicles and shunting technology.

Mystery solved.

Cummins has effectively given readers the man’s full name, his country, his industry, his role in the project, the type of machinery involved, the destination of the vehicle and his glowing recommendation.

It simply withheld the word ZAGRO.

That is not corporate anonymity.

It is fucking charades.

If the intention genuinely was to prevent identification, somebody might want to explain that removing the name from the door while leaving the employee, occupation, nationality and product photographs behind is not particularly sophisticated information control.

It is closer to putting someone behind a curtain while leaving their passport and shoes sticking out underneath.

Hello, ZAGRO.

Nice X15.

ZAGRO Is The Receipt, Not The Scandal

There is another reason this works better as Cummins Confidential than Customer Corner.

TCAP looked at ZAGRO.

There are criticisms around the business, including poor employee-review scores and complaints about management and communication. However, nothing presently uncovered is strong enough to justify manufacturing a Customer Corner bloodbath simply because Cummins has supplied the company.

That would miss the better story anyway.

The important thing here is not that ZAGRO has some enormous corporate graveyard hidden behind the workshop.

Instead, ZAGRO demonstrates something happening at Cummins.

First, TCAP found the Cummins case studies archive.

Then we told everybody we had found it.

After that, more than 200 customer names were extracted and fed into Customer Corner.

The archive became a research engine.

Soon afterwards, we encountered an Elko mining case study where the customer disappeared while Cummins retained extremely detailed financial claims.

Now another customer story has arrived containing virtually everything required to identify ZAGRO except the actual word ZAGRO.

That is a much more interesting sequence than trying to make Moritz Engelhardt responsible for some scandal he does not appear to have.

ZAGRO is not the defendant here.

It is the receipt.

Reactionary Mode Continues

Cummins has already shown a fascinating habit of changing its presentation after TCAP starts rummaging through particular parts of the corporate website.

Dates move.

Newsroom material gets repackaged.

Old subjects reappear in slightly different clothing.

Now, after the Case Studies bloodbath, we have twice encountered customer stories where the company name has conveniently vanished.

Perhaps that is coincidence.

Perhaps Cummins has simply developed a sudden passion for commercial modesty.

Either way, the result is fucking funny.

Case studies traditionally exist because companies want to boast about customers. A named relationship gives the story commercial credibility. It tells readers that a real organisation bought the product, used the service and thought enough of the experience to appear in the supplier’s marketing.

Yet Cummins now appears comfortable telling us almost everything except who some of these customers actually are.

Unfortunately, TCAP already knows where the filing cabinet lives.

Removing the tab does not make the file disappear.

Next Time Remove The Breadcrumbs Too

There is something wonderfully Cummins about the latest attempt.

This is an engineering company capable of helping integrate an X15 into specialist road-rail equipment across continents.

Apparently, however, disguising the customer remains beyond the technical envelope.

Full employee name.

German manufacturer.

Road-rail conversions.

American truck chassis.

Canadian project.

Cummins X15.

Photographs.

Customer testimonial.

Just not ZAGRO.

Perhaps the next Cummins case study will finally crack the code:

“An unidentified organisation somewhere on Earth used some Cummins equipment to do a thing.”

That might buy them another ten minutes.

Until then, deleting ZAGRO’s name while leaving Moritz Engelhardt standing in the middle of the article is not anonymity.

It is a fucking crossword clue.

And after the Cummins Case Studies bloodbath, TCAP has become rather good at crosswords.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

Cummins Confidential : Reactionary Mode Continues – Another Customer Loses Its Name