69 points of view from our industry teams — filter by industry or topic, or search. Figures in each article are sourced or labelled.
By the time warranty cost shows up in the P&L, the failure has been in the field for months. Joining claims, service reports, build records and supplier data turns warranty from an accounting line into an early-warning system — provided people keep the quality decisions.
Parts go end-of-life inside decade-long programmes, certificates expire unnoticed and single-source suppliers wobble. In our delivered work, the risk was rarely in one system — it sat between PLM, ERP, quality and supplier records.
Most plants already have the machine signals and maintenance history to improve uptime. What they lack is a governed link between MES, CMMS, production plans and cost — and a clear line between what an agent may recommend and what a planner decides.
Manufacturers and trading houses sell through distributors and dealers, but primary sales live in SAP and secondary sales in a distributor management system. Until the two are joined on one golden record, schemes leak, stock is invisible and channel profitability is guesswork.
Manufacturing has safety, quality and money decisions that no agent should take alone. The answer is not to keep agents out, but to give each one an explicit autonomy level, an owner, and a ledger of the value it claims.