Costly Harness Failure Mystery Solved

The Challenge:

Several years ago a customer contacted Paragon's founder, Pat Floyd regarding wire harness failure problem that was resulting for $15K to $20K per month in service calls for the customer. The customer was unhappy with the quality being provided by their current cable assembly supplier.

The Solution:

Upon examination of the harness, Pat discovered that the problem was not with the harness supplier but with the harness itself.

The harness was made from a 40 conductor, 28 Awg ribbon cable. Most of the contacts and terminals were designed for 22 Awg wire. As a result, most of the terminations were breaking and / or falling off once the systems were out in the field for a short time.

Pat offered to redesign the harness for the customer and explained that he was confident that he could immediately eliminate all of their harness related service calls with a new design. The only issue was that the new design would cost an additional $10.00 to $15.00 per harness. The customer declined Pat’s offer explaining that they felt the cost increase was too high and that they didn't believe that the harness was really the problem.

A year later, the customer’s production and service problems had doubled. Their customers were getting upset and the service people could not keep up with all the calls. Now desperate, they called Pat again. Within a week, Pat had redesigned the harness, built a prototype and delivered it to the customer. After testing, the customer ordered a trial production run of 100 harnesses. There was not a single harness related failure from any of the 100 systems with the new harnesses.

The Outcome:
Ten years later, this customer has had several new designs and new products. Pat still helps with the harness design and the customer still enjoys zero harness failures, saving the company over $480,000.00 per year in service calls.

Correcting the Crimp, Eliminating the Solder

The Challenge:

The customer had problems with contacts that were crimped to the wire and were falling off or were easily pulled off. The client determined that the solution to this problem was to solder the contacts to the wire after they were crimped. This caused a significant amount of added cost and ultimately resulted in a weaker bond that was prone to cracking and failure.

The Solution:

Paragon was contacted to quote on the assemblies. Paragon determined why the original contacts were falling off, and noted the use of solder as a remedy. Paragon developed samples using the correct crimp tools and showed the customer that when the contacts are crimped correctly, with the correct tooling, that the contacts do not fall off and are not easily pulled off, thus solving the original problem and eliminating soldering.

The Outcome:

The process of crimping and soldering was adding twice the amount of labor to the overall cost of the assembly. We were able to reduce the overall cost of these parts for savings of between $80,000 to $100,000 per year.

Super Fast Prototypes Made in America

The Challenge:

Our customer was having a very difficult time meeting their production deadlines for a new product release because it was taking their supplier six weeks to provide working prototypes. The key issue was their use of an off shore manufacturing facility.

The Solution:

After working with the customer’s engineers and studying their drawings, it became clear that Paragon could supply them working prototypes within 24 hours to a few days.

The Outcome:

Prototype turn times were dramatically reduced while simplifying logistics and practically eliminating the cost of shipping and associated lag time.