Case Study: Discover how one Tier 1 supplier used IntelliWORKS MES traceability to quickly identify misinstalled parts and prevent a potentially multi-million-dollar recall.
The Customer
Pyramid Solutions worked with a global Tier 1 automotive supplier that designs, engineers, and manufactures innovative products for nearly every vehicle manufacturer worldwide. Annual sales have been over $7.5 billion, with 25,000 employees and 26 facilities worldwide.
The Challenge
In the Tier 1 automotive supplier world, it’s a common practice to remove a sampling of parts to ensure the assembly, fit, and finish of each part is correct. This is know as the “fit-and-finish test.”
During a routine fit-and-finish test, this Tier 1 automotive supplier created a small batch of 17-non functional engineering sample airbags and set them aside after testing so they did not enter production.
Inadvertently, the 17 sample airbag units mixed with the production airbags and the supplier unknowingly installed them into 17 instrument panels destined for a final assembly plant. The 17 instrument panels containing the non-functional airbags ultimately became finished vehicles.
Out of the 17 effected vehicles, eight shipped to dealerships and one was in route for delivery to a customer.
For the Tier 1 supplier, it immediately became a top priority to identify the airbags involved, the instrument panels containing the airbags, and the specific vehicles that received the instrument panels.
The Solution
The supplier had previously installed a Pyramid Solutions’ integrated Manufacturing Execution System (MES) at their plant. This solution, IntelliWORKS, captured and housed data for each production line, including the line that accidentally installed the sample airbags in the instrument panels.
IntelliWORKS MES provides reliable, comprehensive data collection and reporting. The solution enhances compliance with customer requirements and government regulations for critical production components, such as airbags, steering columns, and other safety-critical parts. Traceability dramatically improves part and product tracking and provides mission-critical linking of component lots or process parameters to assemblies, serial numbers, VIN tags or shipment containers.
IntelliWORKS tracked and recorded each instrument panel that received the airbag. The system scanned and stored each of the bar-code serial numbers on the airbags. The serial number also associated the airbag and panels with a vehicle identification number (VIN) at the time of installation.
Upon discovery of the missing airbag samples, the supplier’s management team quickly reviewed the historical data collected and stored by IntelliWORKS, identified the VINs of each vehicle, and instantly initiated a focused recall operation of only the 17 affected vehicles.
Identifying the affected instrument panels and vehicles was expedient because of IntelliWORKS’ capability to instantly retrieve historical data and provide real-time visibility into the process.
Within 48 hours, the supplier located all 17 vehicles and shipped them back.
What could have been a multi-million dollar recall became an efficient containment operation thanks to the supplier’s ability to leverage traceability with IntelliWORKS.
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