Yes We Can
[su_dropcap style=”flat”]W[/su_dropcap]ITH THE global recession in full swing for 8 years now and no improvement on the horizon, 2016 bearing especially bearish news, the manufacturing sector all over the world faces especially tough choices. It needs to cut costs on all fronts, operating lean and mean, in order to survive. Smart innovative technology is the natural answer. All manufacturing sectors, be it defence and aerospace, gas & oil, communications, energy industry with all its segments, utilities, automotive and all the rest need to find a way to drive down operational costs. One of the spheres where it can be achieved quickly and efficiently is product design and maintenance. To efficiently improve the design process, monitoring every design stage for faults and failures, to streamline the maintenance and logistics of the factory operation on any large systems such as aircrafts and gas and oil fields, can easily cut the costs by up to 40%.
These algorithmic tools started out as a RAMS technology (Reliability, Availability, Maintenance and Safety), standardized to the highest international standards. The benefit to the client is twofold: first of all, another, external, controller of the design process, offering a greater extent of monitoring and precision. Second, the huge saving on the process. A full design cycle of an electronic board can cost up to $100k (including labour and hardware costs), a company that designs dozens of boards a year, can easily reduce costs by hundreds thousand dollars, (in certain instances – even millions!) with a one-time purchase of a relevant software tool.
The chart below is a typical case in point for the above savings regime to a leading telecom company using BQR’s products, ROI ratio being 1:10.
- Commercial companies are more cost sensitive. In this particular case, total savings were around $3,500,000. Net savings per board – $63K.
The merits of this technology have not escaped major financial institutions involved in the manufacturing sector – eg insurance companies underwriting the plants. Increasing number of industrialists realise that in order to get a better insurance policy, they have to improve their operation, and showing a potential insurer efficient maintenance and logistics function, bears a tangible benefit in policy terms. And on their end, insurers want to verify their clients are smartly running cost-efficient businesses, reducing operational loss, utilising every available resource to its fullest. As ASE in Poland can testify, using BQR’s unique FMECA tools to reduce the risks for insurance.
Another aspect of this technology is the big bid-for-tender infra-structure projects. When submitting a bid, a smart design can both cut costs and offer a more creative and efficient solution to the tender. A leading engineering company in UK (Aegis Engineering) implementing BQR’s software suites for its rail design projects, is a case in point.
A new airport in Timna (Israel) is another. One of the local contenders, bidding for the project, commissioned bqr.com to assess and proof their design, which, in turn, optimized their infrastructure for higher Reliability and Avialbility with an improved maintenance concept.
Paraphrasing an old adage, I would say ‘recession is the mother of smart operation’. The manufacturing sector all over the world, across all industries have no choice but to explore any available solution not only to survive, but to prepare themselves for new realities, which can also bring new opportunities. Early bird gets the worm? Fastest decision maker to upgrade their operation will get more business, cut the costs, including collateral expenses, and surf through the rough times riding the wave.
Wouldn’t you like to be one?
