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Ford Motor Company: Leveraging Data Visualization for Warranty Repair Costs
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Big Data Analytics
- Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Visualization
Applicable Industries
- Automotive
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
- Quality Assurance
Use Cases
- Predictive Maintenance
- Process Control & Optimization
Services
- Data Science Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
Ford Motor Company, one of the world’s largest automakers, needed to help its thousands of dealers quickly identify and resolve problems with warranty repair costs. The company wanted to leverage its 15 years of historical data to mine new insights about manufacturing efficiency, supplier quality, and dealer repair trends. The challenge was to use data visualization techniques to present information in a way that general managers at each dealership could easily understand and compare their warranty repair costs to other dealers.
About The Customer
Ford Motor Company is one of the world’s largest automakers, with 180,000 employees and annual revenue exceeding $134 billion. The company's highly automated operation is largely controlled by information technology, both in its assembly lines and in the management tools it uses internally and distributes to its vast network of dealers. To monitor its worldwide business, Ford depends on business intelligence (BI) technology from Information Builders. WebFOCUS is the corporate standard for ad hoc reporting and BI throughout the company – both at Ford Motor Company and Ford Motor Credit Company.
The Solution
Ford Motor Company, in collaboration with Information Builders, developed a new BI application called GWMS EZ and a new report called 126-EZ. These tools are now in production with 5,000 dealers throughout North America. The new 126-EZ Report takes information that was formerly displayed in rows and columns and presents it in a colorful, visual format of interactive charts and graphs. These real-time displays of each dealer’s warranty business leverage the three primary GWMS warranty metrics that Ford has tracked for nearly 15 years: Cost per vehicle serviced, Repairs per 1,000 vehicles serviced, and Cost per repair. The GWMS EZ reports can also be rendered on mobile devices, a useful feature as more dealers use tablets and smartphones throughout their businesses.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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