Auto Manufacturer Avoids Critical Line Down Situation

Challenge

A leading global automotive components company was having issues with their vertically integrated equipment used to manufacture automotive seating and interior systems. Valin was contacted by a representative of the company informing us of a malfunction of their headliner tool, creating a “line-down situation”. The headliner tool was built in Korea and contained a PLC and an HMI. The automotive manufacturer also contacted us because their through-put would be affected by the line down if they could not get the machine back up and running quickly enough.

Solution

Valin’s team was on-site troubleshooting the issue within an hour of receiving the phone call.  We assured the auto manufacturer that we had a technical specialist and an application engineer on-site to troubleshoot the issue. We discovered that the issue was with a component in the circuit, not in the PLC. The PLC was performing as expected, turning on its output when it should, but the device on that circuit was not responding. Once the issue was identified, we quickly fixed the problem.

Customer Benefits

Because of our quick response time and internal expertise, our customer got the headliner tool running again quickly and the auto manufacturer was spared having their through-put affected, which saved them costly delays. Both manufacturers appreciated our quick response time and the equipment engineering manager sent Valin a direct email stating:

“Thanks for your team’s excellent support yesterday. The cross functional squad appreciated their support and guidance with the troubleshooting efforts. With their help, the equipment was back up and running by 8pm. Please do pass along our thanks to Valin’s engineering team!”

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