client

Fuel Pump

Practice / Industry: Automotive

Challenge

A fuel pump manufacturer needed to develop a new fuel delivery system to satisfy hot fuel handling requirement. In order to reduce pollution, the company needed to develop a new system which delivered precise fuel flow for combustion so that they could eliminate unused hot fuel returning back to the fuel tank. A team of engineers was assigned to accomplish this in three years. Two years into the assignment, they could not meet the requirement.

ASI Solution

To attack this fuel pump problem, ASI Consulting Group was asked to help with robust optimization strategies. After two months, the developer had a design that met all requirements.

Achieved Benefit

The team finished development in two months, meeting all requirements, and reduced time to market, which translated to saving of approximately $250k of engineering time and development cost. Cost avoidance in future warranty costs, as fuel pumps are a high warranty item was expected to be in the millions.

 

Window Closing Effort

Challenge:

A high volume automobile had a problem with window closing effort. While the ideal value for window closing is 12.5 in-lbs, both right and left side windows were averaging around 20.0 in-lbs, which caused multi-million dollar warranty costs.

ASI Solution:

The window closing effort problem presented many interesting and serial problems. ASI Consulting Group recommended optimized tolerances of components around the door assembly and window regulator.

Achieved Benefit:

The team finished tolerance design in two weeks. As a result, tolerance of two components was adjusted and window efforts were reduced to approximately 13 in-lbs. There was a multi-million dollar reduction in warranty costs.

 

Strategic Quality Focus Nets 100 million

Practice: Strategic Quality Focus

Challenge

A multi-billion dollar automotive supplier was on the brink of losing its OEM customer since it was unable to meet its quality requirement. They sought a strategic quality focus to increase their quality levels and asked ASI Consulting Group to help.

ASI Solution

After our first analysis, it was clear to the team that the company needed to implement DFSS in order to reach their strategic quality focus. ASI’s Subir Chowdhury developed the concept in his 2005 book, “Design for Six Sigma.” ASI has maintained a high-level understanding of implementation and requirements. We conducted a comprehensive review of the client’s quality practices and developed an implementation plan using DFSS.

Achieved Benefit

Quality was increased and the business with the OEM was not only saved, but increased.

 

Software Testing

Challenge:

Software testing is a time-consuming process for any company who develops software systems. A $5B company produced electronics for defense systems. One particular product used for an electronic warfare system was taking 40% of development time for software testing which needed to be reduced.

ASI Solution:

For the procedure to be robust, software testing should be designed by experts. After our initial consultations and meetings, ASI Consulting Group made several recommendations. First, we suggested that the company develop a totally new approach. Second, we felt that robust testing didn’t necessarily mean longer testing. The optimized software testing procedure reduced testing time by more than 75% as compared to the traditional software testing, without deteriorating testing effectiveness.

Achieved Benefit:

Reduced testing time by more than 75% and millions in development costs were saved.

 

Six Sigma: ASI Helps Heavy Equipment Supplier Navigate Market Downturn

Practice: Six Sigma

Challenge

The Company was in a significant downturn: revenues were decreasing, profit margins were plummeting and new product releases were less than desirable.

ASI Solution

Based on their own research, the company sought a consultancy that was a proven Six Sigma expert. ASI was brought in to consult on both product and process improvement and also transactional process improvement. This large undertaking was a very ambitious program for a six sigma implementation. The transactional processes were found to have a large source of untapped waste removal. The new products were being development and released without the benefit of Robust Engineering methodologies. By utilizing both Six Sigma and Design for Six Sigma (in manufacturing and product research) the company re-engineered the way they do business.

Achieved Benefit

The entire business culture was changed. The view of the business by managers was now one from the customer’s perspective and not just the business perspective. Millions of dollars were saved and an ROI of 20:1 was realized.

 

Service To Cash Improvement

Challenge:

Claims submitted to insurance providers resulted in an unacceptable level of denials. In these cases, service to cash transactions were breaking down. Services were provided but were either not paid for, or were paid at a level less than expected. This led to lost revenue and excessive time spent following up on denials. The objective was to reduce the number of denials and act upon remaining denials quickly, resulting in increased revenue and shorter collection.

ASI Solution:

Analysis of service to cash, in particular the denials, revealed that required information was often missing from billings; providers had not been adequately challenged in some denials and people submitting billing often coded in a manner that led to lower payment. Process improvements were made to ensure that required information was provided to the people submitting billing. The collections process was changed to more rigorously review all payments and denials.

Achieved Benefit:

Billing receipts for denials increased over 60% and other ‘policy constrained’ areas of the operation were reviewed.

 

Robust Engineering Assists Product Complaints

Practice / Industry: Robust Engineering

Challenge

Development of a vision based method for classifying occupants in the passenger seat of automobiles. The federal government placed requirements on when passenger side air bags can deploy, requiring the system to be able to detect and classify occupants. Although the company had an existing method of classification, they were trying to explore new technologies that would increase the Robustness of the classification.

ASI Solution

After our initial assessment, it was decided that the company needed robust engineering to improve the process. ASI Consulting Group executed a pattern recognition system called MTS.

Achieved Benefit

The team completed the study of the current and proposed technology and found that it was not capable of meeting government requirements. The biggest benefit of MTS was the fact that the team identified the technology was not capable of meeting the requirements very early on in the development cycle. Knowing this technology was not capable, detection allowed them to free up resources to search for better technologies. ASI-CG then helped using DFSS which provided a new design for classification that worked.

 

Robust Engineering Facilitates Firm’s Entry Into Virgin Market

Practice / Industry: Robust Engineering

Challenge

The firm’s marketing division has identified that the market for compressors for water coolers and mini refrigerators was increasing. The company was eager to capture this new market. Presently it did not have any models for this segment of the market.

ASI Solution

The firm decided to come out with a design comparable with the best in the world, which at the same time would be cost-efficient. The company benchmarked itself with the leading compressor manufacturers. Seven design variants were selected and each varied at two levels. Robust Engineering methodology was used.

Achieved Benefit

Robust Engineering helped the company to incorporate the best features of the world leaders in a short period of time and successfully come out with a new design. The design was approved by the R&D department for production. The weight of the compressor was approximately 6.5 kg which was a reduction of 36% over the original weight. It was able to capture the market, yielding a very high profit to the company.

 

Power MOSFET

Challenge:

A power MOSFET is used in automotive electronics as a reliable switching device. An increase of electronics creates resistance to reduce power dissipation within. In general, on-resistance of the power MOSFET is reduced by miniaturization of unit cells. This team was task however, with reducing on-resistance by improving the drain electrode process.

ASI Solution:

ASI Consulting Group optimized the design of the MOSFET drain electrode.

Achieved Benefit:

The improved robustness of the electrode drain allowed for an annealing process to be eliminated. Because the annealing is eliminated, all defects from annealing were eliminated. Because there is no annealing, the substrate can be thinned further, which leads to a reduction of resistance that is due to the substrate. A total reduction of the on-resistance of 25% was achieved. Since a 25% reduction in on-resistance over the life of the product was achieved, the chip size can be reduced by 25% with the same power dissipation. The improvement provides a remarkable 25% cost reduction in unit manufacturing cost of the power MOSFET.

Paradigm Change In Approach Through DFSS

Practice / Industry: DFSS

Challenge

An automotive supplier was facing an intense pressure to reduce emission from its fuel handling system. Many of its previous efforts to confront this problem failed. This was of strategic importance to the company and ASI was called for its expertise to solve this problem.

ASI Solution

ASI worked with client’s team of engineers to design an optimization strategy using DFSS. Within two months, a design that met all requirements was executed.

Achieved Benefit

Our implementation of DFSS translated into substantial cost savings of several million dollars. The future warranty cost avoidance also contributed several million dollars.

 

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