Discover how one aerospace company boosted utilization 4x

The Challenge
The customer's Aerospace division had risen to the challenge of today's intense competitive pressures through a major reorganization that consolidated facilities and reduced costs.

But there was at least one area officials hadn't fully explored for performance upgrade: test and measurement capital equipment.

• Over 150,000 assets in engineering
• 15 primary facilities in North America
• But no comprehensive data about what was where, who was using what and what shape it was in.

These unknowns were anathema to the company's data-driven, engineering focused culture. Company leaders realized that not knowing the answers quickly translated into excessive hidden costs of ownership—equipment purchases, property taxes, facility space, calibration & maintenance, rental & lease costs, etc.

With demand for capital stripping supply, there was a clear need and plenty of room for dramatic improvement.

The Solution
A blueprint defined the essential elements of the solution, an implementation plan and pro-forma financial results against which Sente would measure future success. The goal was to launch and test the Sente Test Resource Management™ (TRM) system at one location, then implement it across the company.

Sente and the company's in-house equipment service team worked together to analyze utilization and obsolescence risk of existing equipment, set up the TRM structure—tailored processes, refined roles with metric responsibilities and integrated software tools—with processes beginning to be installed at the beta site in just two weeks.

It didn't take much longer for company leaders to see that the new system was working, leading to a rapid rollout:

• 14 additional locations
• 9-month implementation
• 30% of the owned inventory identified for decommissioning (with 50% to 70% possible based on previous experiences with completely matured processes)

The keystone of the solution is SenteBase™, custom software that measures utilization and provides real-time information on specific pieces of equipment—leading to smarter, more cost-effective decisions about every asset.

The Results
The companywide implementation of the TRM solution led to several rapid, significant improvements, most notably:

• Major reductions in human capital: the labor associated with tracking, maintaining and managing these vital assets.
• Greatly increased ability to fund new projects in engineering.
• Savings objectives exceeded the customer's pro-forma goal by over 20%.

And today, Sente continues to work closely with the company on project management and strategic planning to help the customer continue to mature the TRM process and grow its benefits to the entire organization by including other functions outside of engineering. In addition they are moving toward a totally integrated test environment solution that expands beyond meters and analyzers to large "monument" test stations, ATE and software.

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