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Case study

Connected factory across 40 plants on 18 countries' production lines.

The OEM had a world-class engineering culture but no single operational picture of its plants. We connected machines, quality stations, suppliers, and planning systems so plant managers could act on the same signal within minutes, not days.

40
plants connected to one manufacturing fabric
18
countries rolled into the same operating model
23%
reduction in unplanned downtime
$180M
annualised inventory release

The situation we walked into.

Each plant had optimised locally around its own MES, supplier cadence, and maintenance routines. That produced heroic local performance but made global planning brittle whenever a component shortage, quality excursion, or equipment issue hit multiple regions at once.

The client wanted more than dashboards. It needed plant supervisors, planners, and suppliers to work off the same operational model so schedule changes could happen mid-shift without creating hidden backlogs downstream.

A simplified view of the delivery shape, the control points that mattered, and the signals the client team used to keep the program on track.

Program workstreams

The changes that made the outcome possible.

Stream 01

Industrial data layer

Machine telemetry, SPC systems, and maintenance signals were normalised into a shared manufacturing event model.

Stream 02

Supplier visibility

Tier-1 and critical Tier-2 suppliers published shipment and quality checkpoints into the same control plane.

Stream 03

Digital twin rooms

Plant teams used scenario boards to simulate changeovers, component shortages, and labour constraints before acting.

Stream 04

Edge operations

Low-latency analytics and local failover kept plants running even when wider network links degraded.

Execution rhythm

How the delivery moved from pilot to scaled operation.

Quarter 1

Three-plant pilot

We proved uptime and quality use cases in one drivetrain, one body, and one final-assembly plant.

Quarter 2

Global template

The OEM approved a reusable plant blueprint spanning data contracts, dashboards, and local operating roles.

Quarter 3

Supplier integration

Critical supply-chain checkpoints were added so planners could see constrained components before shortages hit lines.

Quarter 4

Scale and optimise

All 40 plants moved to common signal thresholds and the network operations team took over global support.

Twelve months later

What changed after the transformation settled into the run.

Outcome 01

Maintenance became proactive

Supervisors received failure signals early enough to shift crews and parts before stoppages cascaded across the line.

Outcome 02

Planning freed trapped inventory

The OEM cut safety-stock bias because demand, supply, and quality signals finally lined up in the same hour.

Outcome 03

Plants kept autonomy without fragmentation

Local leaders still tuned to site conditions, but they now did it within a global decision framework that scaled.

"
We finally stopped arguing about whose spreadsheet was right. The line and the planning room were looking at the same truth.
Chief Digital Officer - Global industrial OEM
Delivered from

Engineered by our London centre of excellence.

The industrial data layer, edge operations, and digital twin rooms behind this programme were built by our London Engineering Centre of Excellence - the same team behind our IoT, cloud-native, and Internal Developer Platform work.

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