One company I spoke with had a problem that was far from unique. The company had complex machines in factories around the world. One line of their machines had numerous computer components in it – including an OEMed CPU board (of a specific revision) that was recalled by the manufacturer for safety reasons. Not surprisingly all systems had to be checked to see if the specific board revision was on the system for replacement. Because the company had relatively low product volumes it had never considered tracking the system assemblies to the revision level of the components on their machines nor to the serial numbers of the OEM’d parts. So the only solution was to send field engineers to each machine that had been shipped in a 6 month window (that was as tight as the window could be narrowed to to find the boards).
So the company stocked the field personnel with replacement boards and sent them around the world to replace the unsafe boards. Lets look at some of the costs associated with that effort
1) shipping boards to field offices
2) field personnel scheduling with each customer
3) travel and lodging for most customer visits
4) shutting customer production down for “inspection”
5) discovering X% of boards were not affected
6) replacing Y% of boards
7) running short of replacement boards and waiting on shipments
and the list goes on. Multiply the time, cost, disruption by every machine or customer affected.
Has this ever happened to your company? Revision tracking of components to serial numbered final assemblies (knowing the AS-BUILT configuration) is a core functionality for many PLM systems. If you believe that a PLM system is too costly – consider the above scenario and how much is saved by knowing each exact system affected and being able to work directly with the customers with affected systems and not disrupting the customers that are not affected.
We all remember the battery recalls on laptops recently – think of what would have happened if the affected lots were not identified. In a matter of minutes one could check their laptop, do a lookup on the web and know whether thier laptop was affected.
Copyright 2007, LR Hirr, All Rights Reserved
