Client
Credence Systems Corporation designs test equipment for the semiconductor industry.
Situation
The company provides complex, technically demanding systems that include hardware and software. The design team for the next generation product was experiencing high levels of bugs on first article prototypes. This caused expensive rework and delayed new product availability. Reducing the number of design escapes was imperative in order to meet R&D budget constraints and strict time to market requirements.
Solution
The client identified the portion of the design process that needed immediate priority focus. Synergy conducted extensive interviews with key team members and internal customers to identify contributing factors, then drew on internal expertise and published research to pinpoint relevant industry best practices.
Armed with the information from the interviews and research, Synergy designed custom training using the case method. The design team used this interactive training to analyze how real companies handled similar problems in real situations.
Synergy immediately followed the training with a facilitated process improvement session. The design team learned how to analyze its existing process and design a new one. The team identified improvements that customized the best practices to their unique situation.
Result
The design team improved their design capabilities, matching their culture and unique needs. Buy-in was strong because they designed the improvements themselves, rather than importing someone else’s approach. The team also learned an effective method for making improvements that they can apply in the future.
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