The Challenge
Navtech Radar is at the forefront of delivering innovative radar technology solutions for critical national infrastructure, autonomous vehicle navigation, and high-risk environments. Their products are known for their precision and reliability, ensuring safety in hazardous conditions. However, the complexity of their product range, combined with strong quality requirements, posed significant operational challenges.
To maintain high standards and meet the growing demands of their industry, Navtech needed a solution that could streamline production, improve traceability, and enhance quality assurance. They turned to Azumuta to optimize their manufacturing processes, reduce human errors, and ensure consistent product quality. Let’s dive in their main challenges.
1. Managing Complex Product Variants and Customizations
Navtech manufactures a diverse range of products that share similar designs but vary significantly in functionality and configuration. These variations are often critical to ensure safety and performance in real-world high-stakes environments. The complexity of managing these variants presented several challenges.
Outdated Documents
Before implementing Azumuta, Navtech relied on extensive Word documents to outline production steps. These documents were highly inconvenient, difficult to navigate, and prone to version control issues. Operators often struggled to find the correct instructions, leading to confusion and increased risk of errors. Each product variant required specific configurations tailored to customer requirements. Operators manually identified the relevant steps for each variant, increasing the likelihood of misinterpretation and configuration errors. These errors resulted in costly rework, delayed deliveries, and potential safety risks.
The manual approach also made change management highly difficult. When product variants or configurations changed, communicating these changes across teams was inconsistent and inefficient. This lack of real-time communication created bottlenecks, slowed down production, and made it challenging to maintain high-quality standards.
How Did Azumuta Help?
Azumuta provided a dynamic and integrated solution for this challenge through our product variant capabilities. The static Word documents were replaced with interactive digital work instructions that automatically adjusted based on the selected product variant. This ensures that operators saw only the relevant steps for each variant, eliminating confusion and reducing the risk of errors.
Through the ERP connection, the right variants are pushed for each product order to Azumuta, which then dynamically modified the work instructions to guide them through the exact steps required. This real-time customization capability ensured accuracy and consistency, regardless of the complexity of the order.
Azumuta also introduced automated rule-based checks and pass/fail indicators. The system integrates checks to verify product parameters in real time. Using a traffic light system, operators can see clear pass/fail indicators, preventing them from continuing with the build if a test failed. This automates quality control and significantly reduces configuration errors.
The introduction of dynamic and variant-specific work instructions, coupled with rule-based checks led to a significant reduction in configuration errors. This thus led to a huge improvement in first time pass rates. Operators no longer needed to interpret complex documents or remember variant-specific instructions and rules. The intuitive interface made it easier for operators to follow the correct procedures, increasing productivity and job satisfaction.
The cloud-based nature of Azumuta also allowed NavTech to manage changes in real-time. Updates to work instructions were instantly visible to all relevant teams, ensuring consistent communication and minimizing production delays. This streamlined change management process allowed Navtech to respond quickly to evolving customer requirements.
We moved from a system where we had good process control, but it was heavily reliant on our operators understanding the versions and variants of our product. Having Azumuta means there can be no doubt—we’re going to manufacture the right product.
2. Ensuring Traceability and Quality Assurance
Navtech operates in safety-critical industries, where quality and adherence to high standards are essential. However, maintaining traceability and ensuring consistent quality was challenging with their previous systems. Quality checks and production data were recorded manually on paper route cards. These documents were prone to human error, inconsistencies, and loss, making it difficult to track product history or identify issues.
Compliance
Proving compliance during audits was also a time-consuming process. Manually matching paper records with production data was labor-intensive and prone to discrepancies. This created a risk of non-compliance and affected customer trust. Additionally, the lack of a centralized system made it challenging to track non-conformities, understand their root causes, or implement effective corrective actions.
Subassemblies
Navtech Radar uses several subassemblies in their products. This means that several components of the radars are built beforehand and are then used in random main radar builds. Managing these subassemblies presented a significant challenge. The lack of real-time visibility into when subassemblies were completed and where they were used created a gap in traceability that needed to be addressed.
Peripheral Integrations
Another major challenge was the lack of integration with peripherals, such as barcode scanners and test equipment. Operators had to manually input serial numbers and test results, increasing the risk of transcription errors. Additionally, quality checks relied on standalone devices that weren’t connected to a central system, making it difficult to track real-time quality data and ensure consistent pass/fail criteria.
How Did Azumuta Help?
Azumuta provided NavTech with an end-to-end digital solution for quality assurance and traceability. The platform automatically generated comprehensive traceability reports for each product, recording every step, parameter, and component used during manufacturing. This ensured complete traceability and provided a detailed audit trail for compliance verification.
A traceability report also entails automated tracking of the amount of time an operator spent on the instruction steps of a specific product. This replaced the need for traditional stopwatch-based efficiency monitoring, improving operator morale and process visibility.
Additionally, the platform’s real-time non-conformity reporting and feedback loop were transformative. Operators could instantly flag non-conformities using feedback tickets, which were automatically routed to the appropriate team. This ensured timely resolution and prevented issues from recurring, therefore allowing instant problem-solving rather than waiting for paper-based reports. The closed-loop feedback system fostered continuous improvement and enhanced accountability.
The real-time feedback and comprehensive traceability significantly enhanced quality control and consistency. The automated checks and reporting reduced the risk of defects and recalls, improving overall product reliability. The centralized system also provided full visibility into non-conformities, allowing NavTech to identify root causes and implement preventive measures efficiently.
The ability to demonstrate full traceability and adherence to quality standards strengthened customer confidence. NavTech leveraged this transparency to reinforce its reputation for reliability in safety-critical industries. By centralizing quality data and automating compliance checks, NavTech reduced the time spent on manual audits and paperwork, allowing teams to focus on more strategic, value-added tasks.
To address the challenge of peripheral integration, Azumuta seamlessly connected with barcode scanners, test equipment, and other external devices. Barcode scanning eliminated manual data entry errors, ensuring accurate serial number tracking and reducing administrative overhead. By integrating directly with test equipment, Azumuta automated pass/fail recording, preventing operators from proceeding with faulty components. This ensured real-time data capture and immediate issue resolution, significantly improving quality assurance.
In terms of subassemblies, Azumuta introduced real-time tracking of when subassemblies were completed and which subassembly is used in which main radar through scanning the subassembly when assembling it in the main radar build. This is extremely beneficial in terms of traceability, while not slowing down the operator. Hold on, it goes even further than that. Through our previously described rules system, we can flag when the wrong subassembly is used, leading to a reduction in non-conformities.
To conclude the challenges, by leveraging Azumuta’s advanced digital platform, Navtech Radar successfully transformed its manufacturing operations. The streamlined workflows, real-time feedback, and automated compliance checks enhanced product quality, traceability and operational efficiency.
Azumuta connects directly with our ERP. With a single button press, jobs are created and sent to the factory floor. Serial number matching and pass/fail results are automated through API connections. This alone has cut our admin time by 50%.
To conclude the challenge,
By leveraging Azumuta’s advanced digital platform, Navtech Radar successfully transformed its manufacturing operations. The streamlined workflows, real-time feedback, and automated compliance checks enhanced product quality and operational efficiency.
Implementation
The ERP connection played a crucial role in NavTech Radar’s successful implementation of Azumuta. Thanks to Azumuta’s flexible API connectivity, integration with Navtech’s existing ERP system, “Epicor,” was seamless and fully operational within two weeks.
This real-time connection automated key processes, including job creation, serial matching, and compliance reporting, significantly reducing manual data entry. Moreover, the integration provided instant visibility into material shortages, procurement needs, and job completion statuses, allowing for more efficient resource management and production planning.
The intuitive drag-and-drop interface accelerated deployment and user adoption. Navtech created its first digital work instruction set within a day, and by the end of the first week, the system was fully operational on the shop floor. Operators quickly embraced Azumuta because of its user-friendly design and clear, visual instructions.
The key for adoption was the fact that operators view Azumuta as an added value that helps them, rather than just another tool that will slow them down. Buy-in from the shop floor was also generated through the feedback tickets as the operators could actively contribute to process improvements. This feeling of empowerment and being heard lead to fast adoption.
In terms of peripherals, by leveraging our plug-and-play Peripheral Hub, we effortlessly connected with Navtech radar’s existing hardware. This ensured a smooth transition without requiring major infrastructure changes.
Navtech adopted a phased rollout strategy, starting with pilot projects to gather operator feedback. This iterative approach allowed them to fine-tune the system based on real user input before scaling it across all production lines. Close collaboration with the Azumuta team ensured a smooth deployment. In fact, our excellent service was cited as a key differentiator with our competitors.
Our Azumuta team provided 24/7 support and customized solutions tailored to Navtech’s specific requirements. This partnership contributed to high user satisfaction and successful implementation.
