Case Study: Crown International achieves 171% ROI and a data-driven, fix-to-root-cause culture with Hertzler Systems Inc.

Creating a data-driven fix-to-root-cause culture

Crown International, a Harman company, faced fragmented and duplicative repair and rework data across eleven processes that prevented effective root-cause analysis and continuous improvement. To build a company-wide, user-friendly data infrastructure and enforce defect-investigation processes, Crown engaged Hertzler Systems Inc and its GainSeeker Suite software and consulting services to centralize and standardize failure data collection.

Hertzler Systems Inc implemented a comprehensive data-capture solution (keyboard or barcode input, lookup tables and derived fields) feeding a single GainSeeker Suite repository with automated DPMO tracking and drill-down Pareto analysis. The change eliminated islands of data, improved throughput and first-pass yield, and delivered measurable impact: the project paid for itself in under three months and produced a 171% ROI after seven months, with nearly 70% of savings from reduced repair and roughly 20% from yield improvements.

Crown International

Larry Coburn

Vice President of Operations