Kempower is a growing player in EV fast charging tech, supporting a rapidly scaling market with cutting-edge hardware and software. But scaling up the production of complex systems while keeping quality tight is never easy.
For Tomi Tolvanen, Testing Development and Maintenance Team Leader, WATS has been a crucial part of Kempower’s journey from startup to international manufacturer. And it’s helped transform how test data is captured, understood, and used.
”We open WATS every day – sometimes to fix a problem, sometimes just to confirm things are running as they should. It’s become part of how we work.
Tomi TolvanenTesting Development and Maintenance Team Leader, Kempover
Using WATS to Capture Accurate First-Pass Yield
When Tomi joined Kempower in 2021, the company had just gone public and was expanding fast. Back then, production testing was still developing with just a few stations and limited automation, but even then, WATS was already in use.
At first, the data was mostly collected in the background. But as production volumes increased, Tomi’s team began using WATS more actively – first by implementing systematic repair reporting to capture real First-Pass Yield and better understand where issues were cropping up.
Kempower’s products often require manual test sequences, so a simple issue like a loose wire could interrupt the process. Rather than restarting the whole test after fixing it, operators would continue – but without a log of that repair, First Pass Yield numbers were misleading.
That’s where WATS made a difference.
”When we fix something during testing, it gets logged right away in WATS. This gives us a more honest picture of what’s happening on the line and where we can improve.
Tomi TolvanenTesting Development and Maintenance Team Leader, Kempower
Integrating for full part-level traceability across product lines
Today, Kempower operates around 50 test stations across Finland and the US – a huge leap from the original handful. Both locations run identical systems, with development driven from Finland. With that growth though, came new expectations for traceability, consistency, and system integration.
Kempower’s operations development team developed a custom web interface and used REST API integrations to link WATS with Kempower’s manufacturing systems, unlocking full part-level traceability for several product lines. It’s a level of transparency that simply wouldn’t have been possible before.
Data that drives Change
While measurable improvements like FPY trends are harder to compare due to constantly evolving product design and production lines, one thing is clear and that’s that production now follows FPY daily, and the data can be trusted.
The team has also explored multi-level repair hierarchies, station-based reporting logic, and the client API to improve how data is collected and used across the company. As Kempower continues to grow, the test engineering team is focused on standardizing insights, automating more repair flows, and improving how subcomponent replacements are tracked and logged.
The foundation is already there thanks to early adoption of WATS and a proactive approach to test data, and it’s helping Kempower scale smarter, not just bigger.
