Case Studies

Healthcare - Case Study 1

This company was a European based producer of environmental monitors for use in the healthcare industry. The systems they develop and install are temperature, pressure, humidity and CO2 monitoring amongst others in hospitals, laboratories, blood banks and other critical storage facilities. Their goal for this project was to continuously improve their offering to their customers by providing more efficient and economic monitoring and alert systems.
 

The company had been using Wifi connectivity across large sites to link between their sensor monitoring stations and their remote monitoring units. They were looking for a more secure method of maintaining this link to ensure that ‘out of control’ situations were reported quickly and reliably. They were, however, concerned at the potential cost of changing to a different technology and had no expertise themselves in the area.

 

 

We identified that active local support was important for this customer. They needed to be shown not only the viable technology alternatives, but that the design process would not eat up time and resources. We quickly identified the technology best suited to the company’s application (Sigfox in this case, but GSM and LoRA were also evaluated) and then set about integrating that technology directly onto their PCB. We subsequently built prototypes and were able to supply units for testing, complete with newly designed and improved enclosures, suitable both for the environment in which they were to be sited and optimised for delivering on the products function requirements.
 
We do it all under one roof – from design for manufacturing (DfM) to automated subassemblies and to supply chain management. And our supply chain is vertically integrated so you get the right components at the right time at the right price. We’ll even manage your high-precision plastics from pellet to pack-out. We offer high-performance moulding and tooling, assembly and subassembly, sterilization, logistics and shipping.

Healthcare - Case Study 2

This company produces defibrillators for use in first aid, public safety, military and other markets. Their mission is to improve resuscitation outcomes by developing and marketing products that deliver 1) superior clinical performance, 2) rapid therapy, 3) meaningful information, 4) Higher user confidence, 5) economic value.
 
Currently the company supplies an Automated External Defibrillator (AED), which has the ability to output data gathered during the resuscitation process. This personal information can be transmitted to the hospital or doctor to allow them to perform a level of diagnosis from a remote location or to prepare for the arrival of the patient. The existing solution required that the end user purchase a third party modem to plug in to the AED which leaves the responsibility for the performance of the communication in the hands of the end customer. There have been issues around reliability as well the need for software updates and this has driven our customer to consider the provision of a total solution incorporating their AED and a re-designed communications section based around reliability and redundancy support.
 
Our approach as always is to visit the customer at their site and get an understanding of their problem and then define a clear project scope and requirements document. Following this, we were able to develop an integrated solution that met all of their communication needs.

Automotive

We were approached by a well-known automotive manufacturer to assist in the development of a controller for electro-chromatic glass in a small volume run of a high-end / prestige vehicle. The feature had been advertised in advance to gauge interest among the target client base and the feedback had been very positive. The problem facing the automotive manufacturer at that point was to find the capability for both design and manufacture and requiring a responsive, time-conscious supplier to deliver on all fronts.
 
We worked in collaboration with a Mechanical Design house (who were contracted to design and develop the bracket for holding the electronics enclosure, once developed, to the vehicle) and of course the electro-chromatic glass manufacturer. Developing the product to meet all of the defined requirements including CANbus interface, graduated glass switching and integration with the safety / emergency response requirements and of course adhering to all the specified Automotive tests and standards, the product was successfully delivered and well within the specified timeline.

Agriculture - Case Study 1

This client is based in Ireland and is a developer of a range of monitoring sensors with agriculture applications. They needed help in converting those sensors for application in remote locations; the idea being to create a mesh or network of low-power wireless sensors which are linked to a central node or gateway for onward transmission. The customer’s core capability is the sensors, and they wanted us to develop a solution to provide the link from the sensor to the node / gateway and onwards to the outside world. The customer provides solutions in monitoring of animal health. The data being gathered was small in packet size and using a combination of short range communication capability at the sensor and a GSM enabled gateway, we were able to establish the mesh network they sought, extend the range of their product which had previously been confined to buildings / sheds on the farm and give access to much more relevant and important data for both the clients and their clients.

Agriculture - Case Study 2

Our client in this case was experiencing huge problems in the field…literally! With ‘field’ failure rates of 24% and climbing, the product was in danger of dragging their entire company into disrepute. While some of the problems related to original design errors, the bulk of the issues were a result of sub-standard manufacturing. Asked to help find solutions to the issues that were bedeviling the product, we project managed a solution, picking off and solving the issues from largest to smallest, one after the other. The effect was to reduce the field failure rate from 24%+ to less than 0.5%. Some design issues were simply not amenable to manufacturing ‘work-arounds’, but the improvements from 24% to 0.5% certainly made a significant difference! 

Energy

Our client was having quality and rising cost issues with their manufacturer, however the biggest issue was hidden from sight due to the blatant quality and cost issues screaming in their face. The biggest issue was actually lead-time to their own clients, and zero flexibility in terms of being able to be responsive to their clients’ needs. Frustration with the quality and cost issues eventually forced the company to consider alternative manufacturers.


They choose CW Applied Technology based on our track record of quality (exemplified in trial builds of their products) and our competitive costs. The real result for our client though has been in the flexibility we have provided. To quote the client directly: “We selected CW Applied Technology to be our CM…based totally on our need to radically improve our quality issues being generated at our earlier CM and also to begin to address spiralling costs. Not only did we fix those issues we got a huge bonus along the way…incredible flexibility from CW Applied Technology which has enabled us to shorten our lead-time to our clients to as low as 2 weeks from receipt of order and without building stock levels up!”.

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