Bob Baxendale, senior manager, Bearing Point, Automotive Practice division
Viewpoints
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Drive to a Collaborative Solution
Sharing diagnostic data leads to savings for manufacturers and greater customer satisfaction.
by Bob Baxendale
It's happened to most motorists at one time or another: You're driving down the road on an otherwise perfect day when the "check engine" light flashes on your dashboard. You take your car to a dealer to find out what's wrong. It may be a simple maintenance issue or it may be something major involving the power train. Either way, having complete diagnostic data helps the mechanic conduct a thorough analysis to pinpoint the problem.
The average vehicle contains more than 20 controllers that monitor the engine and various subsystems. Each vehicle stores data on these controller modules, which are constantly running diagnostics. Historically this data has primarily been available in each dealership or a small group of engineering vehicles. It hasn't been brought into a central repository or analyzed on an industry-wide scale. When a vehicle is brought into the shop in need of a repair, the mechanic reads the diagnostic data, makes an assessment, repairs the vehicle and clears the control module.
Generally mechanics get it right—but not always. In some instances they replace parts unnecessarily and those parts get sent back to suppliers. The suppliers test the parts and find them completely up to specs—commonly called NTF, or "no trouble found," in automotive lingo. In most cases, the suppliers can't view the diagnostic data to see what was happening at the time the vehicle failed, which can lead to recurring problems with thousands of vehicles. If suppliers could compare diagnostic information from many similar incidents, they could more easily spot trends and minimize incorrect repairs.
“If suppliers could compare diagnostic information from many similar incidents, they could more easily spot trends and minimize incorrect repairs.”
SHARE THE RIDE
It's not just car and truck manufacturers that face this issue. Airplanes, construction vehicles, medical equipment and consumer electronics also store detailed diagnostic information. So does industrial equipment like presses and injection mold machines. They all have electronic controls, and they all store useful information. Yet very few industries consolidate, analyze and share data effectively.
That is, until now. The decreasing expense of storage has made it possible to maintain huge, centralized databases, and the Internet has made it less costly and more efficient to exchange information. Most importantly, advances in data warehouse and business intelligence (BI) technology have made it easier for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), suppliers and dealers to collect, share and analyze the data.
Centralized data stores help users on a number of levels. For example, suppliers might see a higher-than-average incidence of returns for a certain part or component. To isolate the source of the quality problem, they might trace it to a certain model, plant or time period, and then drill down to the vehicle identification number (VIN) records and diagnostic data to execute root-cause analysis. Product development engineers can drill down into the same data to analyze specific problems with individual vehicles, while a quality manager or buyer's dashboard can be used to determine which suppliers are best meeting their standards and which plants they should source from in the future.
The overriding goal is to reduce the detection-to-correction cycle (the elapsed time between identifying a problem, determining the root cause and developing the repair). The faster a problem can be identified, the fewer vehicles will be involved in that quality issue and the fewer consumers will be inconvenienced. This ultimately protects the brand image and reduces warranty costs since it means a smaller population of vehicles will be affected.
WHERE THE RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD
The motivation for collaboration is tremendous. The automobile industry alone spends up to $45 billion per year globally to cover warranty repairs, according to Warranty Week. If large auto manufacturers can improve efficiency by even 1%, the savings can be significant.
For example, at BearingPoint, we built an early-warning system for a large OEM that captures diagnostic data from auto dealerships and internal garages throughout North America. We put all of the data into a structured format in a data warehouse and used BI tools to allow users to run reports and analyze the data. The early-warning system maintains a database on every car built in the last 12-plus years—when it was built, where it was built, which options it has, which dealership sold it and so forth.
Using this system with five of its major suppliers, one OEM avoided $100 million in future warranty costs in the first six months of operation. The savings are a result of having a global view of problems, coupled with sophisticated analytics for researching and comparing incidents.
Did you know?
The automobile industry spends up to $45 billion per year globally to cover warranty repairs.
In one case a "no start condition" was baffling mechanics, causing them to replace lots of starters, ignition switches, coils, control modules and other expensive parts. Again and again, the suppliers who analyzed these returned parts came up with the same diagnosis: NTF. Once the engineers were able to analyze all of the vehicle diagnostic information associated with the no-start conditions, they realized the problem wasn't with the ignition system, but rather with the theft-deterrent system, which was grounding the starter because of faulty integration.
In another instance, dealers were replacing many air pumps because of problems with oxygen levels in the fuel-injection system. These air pumps cost about $450 to replace, and the problem persisted for six months. Once the early-warning system came online and the engineers could analyze the diagnostic information associated with these conditions, engineers realized the air pumps were fine. The problem was with a $50 sensor that was taking incorrect measurements. Now the tech bulletin alerts technicians to this sensor problem, avoiding many expensive and unnecessary repair jobs.
WORK TOGETHER
We have mature technologies and the intellectual capital to capture and leverage diagnostic data on an industry-wide scale. The challenges to adopting these systems are more cultural than technical.
OEMs sometimes hesitate to give too much information to suppliers because it may disclose other issues. Yet that's no longer a concern, thanks to modern database security and data-protection mechanisms that prohibit suppliers from seeing one another's data and limiting access to only data on their parts.
Solving such cultural problems is in the best interest of all concerned, especially since OEMs have pushed design-release responsibility down the supply chain. Sharing and collaborating help OEMs reduce warranty costs, help suppliers boost product quality and get consumers back on the road quickly—so as not to spoil an otherwise perfect day.
Bob Baxendale is senior manager with the Automotive Practice division of BearingPoint.
