Partnerships and strategic alliances with overseas counterparts can be really beneficial – especially when it comes to reducing operating costs and maximising profits.
But all too often, high failure rates are sometimes just around the corner. Language barriers, cultural differences, lack of research, and brand reputation are all at stake here.
In the past, we saw that businesses would just take data sources from factories, partners or across the business in a variety of different formats. They would then spend hours mining the datasets to work out what it was telling them. This was both laborious and inefficient – and often inaccurate.
We wanted to give the ownership and control back to the brand owner – instead of the factories themselves. After all, it’s their product.
That’s why we created a platform that unified all data points – so that product owers businesses could have a complete oversight of their operational data, from anywhere in the world: on-demand.
Helping Eltek Take Back Control
Fifteen years ago Eltek, a world leader in high-efficiency power electronics and energy conversion, moved their entire manufacturing operation overseas to Asia, and at the same time, increased production volumes.
For Eltek, this resulted in a significantly reduced oversight of operations and, unfortunately, numerous product recalls. This impacted the business heavily – financially and from a reputation standpoint.
Eltek needed to take back control and intervene on their own terms and in real-time. That’s when they turned to us, and we began discussing building a data platform with Eltek.
Our mission was to aggregate all the data sources across the manufacturer’s production lines into one simple, user-friendly platform – so that issues could be dealt with in real-time and, most importantly, on time.
Get The Right Insight When It Matters Most
In the same way that we do for every WATS customer, we installed a WATS client onto the test machines to collect the data.
The WATS client converts all of the necessary datasets into a standardised XML format, and transfers everything across to our server in Microsoft Azure. Here the data was automated and filtered into the Eltek’s account.
This data could be viewed easily on a desktop (although they can now get instant access to it via a mobile app) allowing anyone who needed access to view issues and reports on-demand.
No More Vanity Metrics
Just after WATS was installed, one of the first things Eltek noticed was that yield actually dropped. This was primarily because they were responding to real issues that were reported. However, once the team were able to ensure better efficiencies, recall rates have slowly gone down from 3% to less than 0.1% – which is, in fact, 30 times more effective.
By having access to true data – no more vanity metrics – and better communication lines, Eltek was also able to decrease issue resolution times from 20 days down to just a single day: and increase profit margins.
WATS´ technology has allowed businesses like Eltek to focus on accurate, actionable metrics – giving them a real-time report on actual production line issues. We’ve continued to evolve our capabilities and work with brands and manufacturers across the world.
Perhaps we could help your business?
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