• CUSTOMER: Advanced Medical Device Manufacturer

• DATA CHALLENGE: Data inconsistencies slowing analytics cycle-time

• OBJECTIVE: Improve all aspects of data consumption

• SOLUTION: Viviota Time-to-Insight

• RESULTS: Data Analyses Improvements Speed Product Time-to-Market

Today, manufacturers need powerful engineering data management solutions that accelerate engineering analysis and innovation. Engineering teams need open interfaces to use their existing analysis software tools, coupled with shared access to comprehensive reliable data. This enables engineering teams to unlock all their data for analysis to reduce costs and improve product time-to-market.

SUMMARY

A strategic objective of a multi-billion-dollar advanced medical device company was to stay competitive by bringing products to market more quickly while reducing R&D costs. The R&D group assessed their organization to determine areas where they could drive new efficiencies.

The R&D team identified some current processes that impacted the time to-market for products. Processes for finding, cleansing, and managing test data were not consistent across the organization. Multiple engineers were duplicating effort by performing the same data management tasks. Managing the data for analysis typically took an engineer 5.5 hours/week. Additionally, engineers used error-prone manual applications, such as Microsoft Excel, and inconsistent methods to analyze their data.

With the help of Viviota the team was able to dramatically speed product time-to-market and ensure they met FDA compliance requirements. Viviota provided these advantages:

• Ability to manage and accelerate analysis processing time by up to 10X+
• A complete end-to-end automation of engineering data management tasks,
 freeing engineers to focus on higher value-add activities
• Shared use of peer-reviewed data analysis methods
• Higher test cell capacity utilization
• Data searching capabilities allowing engineers to easily find and access
 data across time and tests
• Reduced need for retests

DATA CHALLENGE — DATA INCONSISTENCIES SLOWING ANALYTICS CYCLE-TIME

Each engineer in the R&D department was using their own solution for managing and analyzing the sensor data from product tests. File formats and metadata were not standardized across the team, data was kept on different drives and network locations. Over time the data became unwieldy and data preparation for analysis was time-consuming and inefficient. Even the most basic preprocessing of data, such as unit conversion, were performed manually. This, coupled with slow analysis software, resulted in analytics reports taking hours to produce. Since the test cell was waiting for input from the engineer performing the analysis, these inefficiencies meant that thousands of hours and millions of dollars were spent each year preparing, analyzing and reporting data, while expensive test cell assets lay idle. 

OBJECTIVE — DATA ANALYSES EFFICIENCIES

To reduce development test cycles and get products to market more quickly, the R&D organization determined that these processes had to be improved.

• Automate key steps in the data preparation process
• Provide consistent and reliable test data sets for all engineering groups to lower variance and shorten testing cycles
• Provide easy-to-use data processing tools for the engineers
• Create shared test data sets, eliminating redundant data management and analysis processes
• Implement automated analysis applications to eliminate time-intensive, error-prone manual analysis methods
• Reduce overall analysis time to improve test cell utilization

SOLUTION — VIVIOTA TIME-TO-INSIGHT SOFTWARE SUITE™

Viviota worked with the advanced medical device company to define a standardized way of finding, cleansing, and managing data to assure consistent high-quality test data. This data would be consistent across the various engineering groups that needed it for analysis.

Viviota created multiple applications to automate analysis and reporting and meet FDA compliance requirements. This entailed pulling together disparate data, from multiple files and locations. The new applications enable R&D engineers to review medical device test results quickly. Processes to verify data, review test results, and approve or take corrective actions are streamlined. Viviota helped to eliminate hours of redundant data management activities while providing higher quality data sets and improving analysis processing time by a factor of 10X.

The solution targeted three areas to meet and exceed the customer’s objectives:

1. Automate data ingestion, metadata standardization and preparation for data exploration
2. Make sensor data searchable and shareable
3. Accelerate analysis to enable faster decision making

RESULTS — DATA ANALYSES IMPROVEMENTS SPEED PRODUCT TIME-TO-MARKET

Viviota Time-to-Insight software accelerated sensor data analysis for significantly faster decision making.

• Analysis and reporting time reduced by 10X
• Standardized metadata schema, allowing engineers to analyze previously unused data for greater insights
• Data management and analytics processes were centralized, providing universal access and peer-reviewed methods throughout the department
• All data is searchable and accessible through TTI