The Challenge
A leading wire harness manufacturer supplying major automotive OEMs faced critical challenges:
- Manual production tracking causing delays in identifying quality issues
- Limited traceability — problematic for automotive industry recall requirements
- No real-time visibility into production line performance
- Paper-based quality records creating compliance audit risks
With increasing pressure from OEM customers to meet IATF 16949 standards and improve delivery times, they needed a modern MES solution.
The Solution
Austral MFG provided specialized MES engineering, working alongside the system integrator leading the project, for a complete platform built on Ignition and Sepasoft MES modules: installation, traceability, dashboards and a regional database consolidating Ignition data for the North American operation.
Track & Trace Module
- Full genealogy tracking from raw wire/connector receipt to finished harness
- Barcode scanning at each workstation
- Real-time WIP visibility across 12 production lines
OEE & Downtime Module
- Automated downtime capture with operator-confirmed reason codes
- Real-time OEE dashboards on the production floor
- Shift-by-shift performance analysis
Results
within 6 months of go-live
| Metric | Before | After | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Traceability | 40% coverage | 100% coverage | Full compliance |
| OEE | 62% | 78% | +16 points |
| Unplanned downtime | 18% | 9% | −50% reduction |
Additional Outcomes
- Passed 3 customer audits with zero non-conformances
- Now expanding to 2 additional facilities
Ongoing Support
Austral continues to provide ongoing system support and optimization services for this implementation.