Sensfix Helps an Automaker in Northern California Reduce Spare Parts Overuse and Loss by 80%

Executive Summary

A global automaker in the San Francisco Bay Area faced facility maintenance issues due to a lack of integration between its legacy systems. Without any visibility into workflows, parts, and consumables, the facility manager knew the company needed to find one solution to digitize all service data and improve the company’s overall service efficiency.

Challenge

Like many manufacturers, the automaker suffered from supply chain issues after the onset of COVID. As a result, the company could not restock parts and consumables fast enough for daily service activities. Even before COVID, the facility manager knew that parts and consumables were being overused or lost and wanted to make it a priority to fix the problem through better parts visibility and workflows. The COVID supply chain issues only magnified the importance of fixing the issue. The automaker needed a way to digitize and monitor the usage of spare parts and consumables across all of its service tasks. After evaluating several of the incumbent CMMS, EAM, and FSM vendors, the company selected eMaint and ServiceNow but ultimately concluded that neither could address its problem.

Solution

After its initial software evaluation did not yield a solution, the automaker discovered and partnered with Sensfix because Sensfix’s AI-powered rule engine, SDM AI Workflows, had the capabilities, flexibility, and simplicity the company needed to solve its parts and consumables problem. With no coding experience required, a facility manager can now easily build any workflow through the Sensfix web app with essential information embedded in each step including the service person, spare parts and consumables required, vehicle, and tools.
Once the service is being performed, the workflow requires service personnel to swipe through the workflow steps on their mobile app and enter inventory items used. At the same time, Sensfix’s AI computer vision and natural language processing capabilities can automatically capture other specific information needed, like values from a meter or LCD display. These digitized inputs are also fed to the workflow AI engine to train the system and establish self-learning workflows.

With a fully digitized workflow and service platform in place, the automaker’s facility manager now has global visibility of all assets within the facility and every service workflow in progress. The facility manager can view detailed real-time data for assets and service including warranties, tools, vehicles, spare parts, and consumables.
To gain more control over the parts and consumables overuse, the automaker has now set limits on the usage of certain inventory items and Sensfix delivers alerts and notifications to management if any thresholds are exceeded.