Situation
Quality and Engineering staff at a tier one supplier of exterior automotive lighting systems.
Critical issue
Key personnel spent over a quarter of their time each month exporting, copying, pasting, verifying, and formatting data for routine customer reports. Process was error prone, and frequently left them scrambling to react to customers’ needs. Furthermore, it robbed time from more value-added activities.
Reason
The company lacked the tools and knowledge to extract the information automatically that they needed for custom reports.
Vision
Plant leadership wanted the ability to print out a standard report automatically, in one step. This would free plant staff to proactively address improvement opportunities and better serve their customers.
Hertzler Systems provided
We added Dynamic Reports module to his existing deployment of GainSeeker Suite. We also provided assistance in building a few standard report formats, and training on adapting those standard report formats to new situations.
The new report format is graphical, easy to read, and easy to interpret. Users do not need any specialized knowledge to run the reports, so anyone can produce them. (View the report in a new window)
Results
By automating reports and eliminating the role of “data jockey”, this team has dramatically reduced the cost and effort required to serve their customers. They’ve increased the reliability of their data and as a result, their credibility with the customer. The automated reports have also enabled them to anticipate or identify problems much earlier and thereby become much more proactive. The team expects that this will contribute to ongoing improvements in the supplier / customer relationship, which will in turn lead to both repeat and new business.
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