For Industrial OEMs, every day that goes by when there is a new, hidden customer issue means more downtime and greater warranty cost. 

The legacy approach to detecting field issues is often reactive, relying heavily on data sources such as warranty claims. While largely reliable, this data is generally lagging and not rich enough to learn about emerging issues. By the time a warranty claim is filed, processed, and analyzed, the underlying issue may have been occurring in the field for months, impacting multiple units. This delay creates a "blind spot" where emerging issues go undetected, leading to increased downtime for customers, ballooning warranty costs, and potential safety risks. Warranty claims also do not include much of the rich information that exists in other signals from the field.

To close this gap, Industrial OEMs turn to Axion to shift from reactive firefighting to proactive issue management. By analyzing a wide range of data sources - from work orders and service records to call center logs and telematics (fault codes, software logs) - Axion provides a holistic, real-time view of what is actually happening in the field, so that issues can be solved at the earliest warning signal.

Putting Proactive Quality into Practice: A Power Solutions Manufacturer Example

A prime example of this transformation is a global leader in power solutions. Like other manufacturers, this Industrial OEM faced the persistent challenge of delayed signals. There was often a 3-6 month lag between a technician seeing an issue in the field and that issue appearing in warranty data. This delay meant that by the time an issue was identified, it had often scaled, impacting more customers and costing more to fix.

By deploying Axion, this power solutions OEM was able to ingest and analyze a wide range of data, spanning technician calls, fault codes & OTA signals, service records, work orders, and more. This "x-ray" visibility into the field allowed their engineers to detect emerging issues months earlier than traditional methods allowed and solve them months faster.

In one example, an intake aftercooler had a loosening bolt issue. Initially, the team believed the issue was an isolated problem in a single country, likely driven by extreme heat in that country’s climate. However, by using Axion to analyze service records globally, they discovered the issue was happening in multiple regions and operating environments. This insight disproved the "heat" hypothesis and pointed to the true root cause: an incorrect bolt grade and torque specification.

The Impact of Holistic Visibility

Armed with this real-time intelligence, this manufacturer was able to issue a global fix much faster. On this single issue, they avoided an estimated $500,000 in costs and prevented potential catastrophic engine failures that would have resulted in significant downtime for their mining customers.

The impact extends beyond a single component. By leveraging Axion to analyze across all signals, this company has been able to identify over $20 million in impact potential, detecting issues ranging from valve guide failures to fuel system anomalies.

For industrial OEM manufacturers in high-stakes industries, this ability to "listen" to every data point is a competitive advantage, whether it’s a technician’s note in a work order or a fault code from a vehicle’s ECU. It allows quality teams to solve the right problems faster, ensuring maximum uptime for their customers and reducing the cost of quality for their business.

Learn more about how Axion helps get ahead of early warning signals here:

• Blog: Cummins AI Transformation: Partnering with Axion for Customer Uptime, Warranty, and Customer Experience

• Video: Hear from the Phanindra Garimella, Executive Director - Engineering Strategy and Transformation at Cummins

• Learn more about how Axion helps manufacturing teams fix product issues at the first signal here and start your journey with Axion sign up here to explore a custom demo on your own data.