Last week, Avidyne Corporation announced a company-wide initiative to expand and enhance customer service and support for owner-pilots who use Avidyne products -- including Entegra integrated flight decks, FlightMax multi-function displays and TAS600 series active surveillance traffic advisory systems.

Under the new initiative, dedicated customer support teams will focus on current Avidyne owners and the Release 6.0 software upgrade program for the Entegra integrated flight deck. On-hand inventory of Entegra and FlightMax multi-function display system components has been increased to minimize downtime on repairs and expedite exchanges. The initiative will also provide more intense training for support personnel and Avidyne dealers.

The initiative also includes the appointment of Eric Schmidlin as Director of Customer Service & Support.

"We’re building the avionics industry’s best customer service organization to go along with the industry’s best-selling and easiest-to-use systems for light general aviation aircraft," said Mark Sandeen, Avidyne’s vice president of sales and marketing. "With his impressive experience and proven track record, Eric will play a key role in leading our support teams to deliver on our '100 percent customer satisfaction' guarantee."

Schmidlin (below, right) held the position of general manager of Ryan International prior to its merger with Avidyne. Prior to joining Ryan, Schmidlin was an operations leader and project leader at Honeywell Aerospace and was Manufacturing Research Fellow at Boeing Corporation. Schmidlin holds master’s degrees in management and in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dedicated customer support teams will focus on current Avidyne owners and the Release 6.0 software upgrade program for the Entegra integrated flight deck. On-hand inventory of Entegra and FlightMax multi-function display system components has been increased to minimize downtime on repairs and expedite exchanges. The initiative will also provide more intense training for support personnel and Avidyne dealers.

"Eric’s leadership of our expanded customer support organization is an important step forward in our continued growth," said Avidyne president Dan Schwinn. "Our support initiative also is an outward sign of a broader commitment to infuse a customer-centric mindset across all parts of our company. With comprehensive input and feedback from OEM partners, the dealer network, owners and Avidyne employees, the support team will have latitude to implement process improvements and make decisions to ensure customer satisfaction."

FMI: www.avidyne.com