Customer Success Story - Physical Security
Customer Situation - An industry-leading Fortune 500 access control & security company was struggling to overcome a history of problems with outsourced computer hardware.
Dedicated Computing engineers found that the systems they used were cramped inside, with poor airflow management. The resulting thermal issues combined with weak drive mounts led to an unacceptable 10% drive failure rate. Deficient packaging permitted frequent shipping damage, and inadequate revision control complicated their testing and service processes.
Design - Dedicated Computing obtained the surveillance cameras and test fixtures required to simulate a production environment for the customer’s product, and went to work testing the existing design. When exact sources of the problems were identified, we designed and engineered solutions that markedly decreased the failure rate. Our succcessful takeover of production of the platform benefited both from our existing vendor relationships and our ability to form new ones. Our sourcing group negotiated for replacement parts with previous vendors to minimize product variation and cost changes.
Though the improved system design addressed thermal and mechanical issues as well as possible, DC engineers felt that the customer would be best served with a product completely redesigned to meet their specific environmental, performance, and fulfillment requirements.
Solution - Dedicated Computing prepared and presented an end-to-end solution: we would design and build a system around their custom video boards, load and configure their software, implement a custom testing methodology to ensure environmental tolerance and video performance, and facilitate a joint quality assurance program.
Support - DC also developed an RMA process to sync with the customer’s own technical support methods, and produced quarterly service reports for joint review of quality and support trends.
The success of these initial programs has led to a long-term strategic relationship between the companies, extending from early in the product marketing process to the arrangement of unique service and support programs.
We now manage inventory of the customer’s system components at our own warehouse, including base systems prepped for an advance replacement pool. In an urgent situation, DC can equip these systems with any combination of up to 4 peripheral cards and up to 8 drives and ship them to the end user site within 48 hours.
In more typical circumstances, the customer makes use of our secure extranet to place orders online at any time of the day or night.
The customer has new confidence in their hardware, and can now focus on developing their software and expanding their line into mass storage products and other applications.
DC’s ability to manage the details of an entire product program is allowing this customer to continue to innovate and enter new markets without the drain of constant oversight of their supplier. The close partnership built between both organizations is a solid base for long-term success.