CHALLENGE
Create a seamless, efficient process to roll out a key custom product that needed to be qualified simultaneously across 7 different customer’s system design teams and 7 different operations teams, spread across 3 different contract manufacturers. A large manufacturer’s complex $2B multi-product line release risks being delayed by 6-12 months due to system-level production qualifications. Complexity of the process along with a second major chip revision introduced midway through the qualification has seriously affected the schedule. Customer qualification needs to happen simultaneously so that the maximum number of product lines can get to market as early as possible.
KEY CHANGES
- Developed business processes for a highly transparent data flow from chip supplier to systems to contract manufacturers.
- Established a project management framework connecting customer builds at manufacturing sites for close communication among design team program managers and their respective operations teams, suppliers’ customer service reps (CSRs), contract manufacturers’ CSRs, and manufacturing program managers and line supervisors.
IMPACT
- The new process executed 7 parallel customer qualifications over 12 months with NO DELAYS to any system build schedules.
- This avoided potential $90M/quarter revenue shortfalls for each customer.
- The project management framework was adopted for all cross-platform key components to manage complex simultaneous new product introductions and has yielded a predictable time from first key component prototype availability to first system-level production shipment.