Keysight Technologies, a technology company that helps businesses, service providers, and governments accelerate innovation to connect and secure the world, has released the results of a study conducted by Dimensional Research, which shows that nearly all businesses who design and develop electronic products experience costly and preventable delays due to issues with poor configuration, maintenance or training of test equipment.
The survey found that 98% of R&D engineers reported workflow issues related to calibration, setup, equipment misuse, or failure. For 97% of them, the delays caused a direct loss of revenue for their business, with 53% of them reporting more than $ 100,000 lost per day waiting for these technical support issues to be resolved. More than half (59%) experienced more than 6 issues requiring technical assistance intervention each month. To reduce these issues, 89% of R&D engineers say their test teams work more efficiently if they can quickly access test experts and knowledge resources.
“Electronics businesses are under constant pressure to shorten the development cycle of new products to meet time-to-market targets,” said John Page, president of Keysight Global Services. These companies can no longer afford to wait days or weeks to resolve technical support issues on test and measurement equipment; they need quick answers from experts with guaranteed and reliable response times ”.
Here are the main findings of the study conducted with 305 R&D engineers in several markets, such as the technology and telecommunications sectors:
• Test equipment issues cause delays for almost all businesses: 97% of respondents said they experienced project delays due to test equipment issues. Equipment failures requiring repair are the most frequent, cited by 63% of respondents, followed by poor equipment configurations (56%) and uncalibrated equipment (50%).
• The costs of days lost due to test equipment problems are high: 53% of respondents said their company was losing more than $ 100,000 per day when R&D teams were unable to progress due to problems with test and measurement equipment. According to 12% of those surveyed, their business was losing more than $ 500,000 a day.
• Problems with test and measurement equipment are common: in a typical month, 95% of respondents said they should contact their equipment supplier's technical support team at least once. test. In addition, 59% of respondents said they encountered six or more technical support issues per month, and 13% said they encountered more than 20 issues per month.
• The impact of equipment problems on businesses: 53% of respondents said product manufacturing was affected by poorly functioning test equipment. Forty-seven percent said a product had been rejected by a buyer and 45% said they experienced an increase in product returns, while 28% had experienced product recalls. The result is a direct damage to their quality and reputation, from which it is not easy to recover.
• The value of expert testing support services: 90% of respondents say they would appreciate having access to external technical support. Troubleshooting is the most desired service (cited by 54%), followed by answers to technical questions and discussions (53%), understanding how a particular test or equipment works (49%), and calibration services (46%).
“Manufacturing and R&D test engineers are really at the forefront of this battle. In the past, they had time to become experts in test equipment and standards, says Ted Burns, global director of KeysightCare at Keysight. However, with the proliferation of test matrices and the huge increase in use cases, they simply don't have time to research the functionality of equipment, how to optimize test setups, or on how to troubleshoot complex tests in complicated environments. The result is a reactive approach that results in costly delays, lost revenue and teams of engineers who have to work late evenings and weekends to keep to their schedules. "
To help businesses meet these challenges, Keysight offers KeysightCare, a comprehensive and scalable model of test and measurement support. KeysightCare provides design and test engineers proactive and dedicated support for instruments, software and solutions. It provides priority connection to highly trained live technical experts, as well as a knowledge center with technical content and programming examples. KeysightCare offers guaranteed response and turnaround times for repair, calibration and technical support to accelerate innovation and time-to-market for customers' products.
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