From Legacy Downtime to a Predictive Smart Factory
How Telos Advisory helped a Swedish Manufacturer achieve a 22% increase in OEE in 9 months.
Client
A Mid-Sized Swedish Manufacturer
Industry
Automotive Parts Manufacturing
Core Challenge
Unplanned Downtime, Legacy Data Silos
Telos Solution
Phased IoT Integration, Predictive Maintenance Framework
Key Results
- +22% Increase in OEE
- -35% Reduction in Unplanned Downtime
- 9-Month Payback on Investment
- 100% Integration of 3 Legacy Production Lines
The Operational Reality
The client, a key supplier in the Nordic automotive sector, was running a highly-reliable but aging fleet of machinery. While production was consistent, it was far from optimized. Data was trapped in individual PLCs and manual Excel reports, making a unified view of the factory floor impossible.
This lack of visibility led to a reactive maintenance culture. Unplanned downtime was frequent, occurring on average 3-4 times per week and costing an estimated 800,000 SEK per quarter in lost output and labor costs. The pressure to increase Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) was immense, but without data, they were flying blind.
A Purpose-Driven Path to a Solution
- Diagnose: Our engagement began with a 2-day on-site 'Diagnose' phase, mapping every data point from the factory floor to the ERP. We identified the three most critical production lines where downtime had the biggest financial impact.
- Design: We 'Designed' a pragmatic, phased roadmap that focused on 'quick wins' first. This wasn't a 'rip-and-replace' strategy. Instead, we architected a solution to retrofit their existing machinery with modern IoT sensors and a centralized data broker.
- Implement: Pawan Samarakoon personally led the 'Implement' phase, working with their internal team and a selected IoT vendor to deploy the hardware and configure the data platform over a 6-week period, ensuring minimal disruption to production.
- Optimize: After 'go-live,' we began the 'Optimize' phase, using the new real-time data to build predictive maintenance dashboards in Power BI and train the operations team on how to interpret and act on the insights.
Building the Resilient Smart Factory
The final solution included:
We implemented an MQTT data broker to collect real-time data from all retrofitted machines, breaking down data silos and creating a single source of truth for production metrics.
Non-invasive vibration and temperature sensors were installed on critical legacy machinery, allowing them to 'speak' a modern language without costly hardware replacement.
We built a custom Power BI dashboard that visualized real-time OEE, identified performance trends, and triggered alerts based on predictive failure thresholds.
Conducted hands-on training workshops with the operations and maintenance teams to ensure they could own, interpret, and act upon the new data effectively.
A Tangible, Measurable Transformation
The results surpassed our initial projections. The 22% increase in Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) was a direct result of the 35% reduction in unplanned downtime. By moving from a reactive to a predictive maintenance model, the client was able to service machinery during scheduled off-hours, dramatically increasing productive uptime.
The new data-driven culture, fostered by the accessible Power BI dashboards, empowered the operations team to identify and resolve micro-bottlenecks that were previously invisible. The entire investment, including advisory and hardware costs, achieved a full payback in just under 9 months, with ongoing savings projected to exceed 3.2M SEK annually.
"Telos Advisory was the key. Pawan understood our factory floor *and* our C-suite goals. We're not just more efficient; we're smarter and more resilient."
Operations Director
Anonymized Client
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