The Consumer Electronics (CE) manufacturer today is challenged by the consumer's increased demand for easy-to-handle technologies that don't become obsolete immediately after purchase.

How can CE manufacturers extend the product life cycle without retrofit?

CE Manufacturers have an ever-increasing need to obtain early product failure information. They need to proactively implement corrective action on initial product defects in order to take timely actions, including running production changes.  

After years of quality programs (from TQM to Six Sigma), the true defective rate for most consumer electronics products is well below 2%, usually below a 1% rate. However, consumer electronics returns from dealers to manufacturers have remained at 5% and higher levels. EARLY DETECTION MONITOR helps reducing manufacturers' risk of receiving product defect information too late to minimize the impact of lost revenue and lost customers.

Until now, Early Detection of initial product defects following new product has taken literally months from initial product distribution to warranty claims detection that a product defect has occurred in the field. This inherent delay in obtaining meaningful early detection information on new products has presented major challenges including requirements to implement massive field modification programs, inventory rework of warehoused products, and in many cases, product recalls, costing Manufactures hundreds of Millions of dollars in lost revenue.  

Equally important, Late product failure information costs the reputation of the manufacturer dearly as well as the reputation and burden it places on all customers including Dealers, Distributors and Consumers.  Typically, data regarding product defects reaches the Manufacturing and Production executives 3 months into the product life cycle, typically through the manufacturers service organizations.  The net result is that thousands to hundreds of thousands of product are already in the distribution chain and the failure data is received too late to allow corporate executives to take immediate corrective action to positively impact running production changes to minimize bottom line costs (lost profit) for the manufacturers. 

Dealers and Distributors relying on the delivery of large product quantities to meet consumer demands in peak selling seasons also pay dearly through lost business and unproductive time and effort by their required involvement in the necessary corrective action and potential return of product sold or on their show room floors.

Utilization of EARLY DETECTION MONITOR as the Industry standard provides the most versatile and cost effective method available today for Manufacturers to partner with their Dealers/Distributors and significantly reduce the risk of lost revenue and lost customers.  Who doesn't want to receive timely accurate data on new products earlier in the product life cycle?

How Early Detection Monitor works?

EARLY DETECTION MONITOR Consists of several key elements that ensure the Manufacturer obtains the most meaningful product defect data in the fastest possible time. The program incorporates the following features

1. Capture information necessary to allow manufacturers to identify potential product defects and their source at the earliest possible time
2. Provide Manufacturers the opportunity to send an Engineering/Service Swat team to the site of the reported failures and/or have defective product immediately returned via next day shipping to analyze the defect at the internal production/Engineering Facility
3. Capture information necessary to allow manufacturers to identify potential product defects and their source at a more detailed level by utilizing a select group of the top Independent Service Centers to assist Manufacturers in pin pointing specific Problems to board/component level
4. Secure portal access to dealers, service centers, warranty centers, and manufactures
5. Extensive Reporting for manufactures to analyze the various real time failures 
6. Manufacturer utilizes select group of top 100 Independent Service Centers as early detection warning system with secure web portal to report specific details of defects on new model introduction products.

Business Benefits

Allows quicker changes to manufacturing procedures (running earlier production changes) and Dealers/Distributors reducing excessive failures before the majority of potentially defective items are sold to consumers, helps to minimize the potential failures and reduce future warranty cost.