Quality issues have far-reaching implications for organizations-from understanding the impact of product failure to predicting where and when failure is most likely to occur to assessing the impact of changes in materials, processes, and design on overall quality. The applications for business analytics in the quality arena are vast. And understanding the legacy of decisions that impact quality is vital to the long-term health of an enterprise.

(Client names have been removed in accordance with our non-disclosure agreement.)

Challenge: What is the financial risk in the future as a result of product warranty claims and where (geographically) will most of these claims occur?

Solution

IHBI developed a set of predictive warranty models to help the client understand the likely warranty claims against its products. Since product failure was related to environmental factors (weather and soils), and claim rates vary by communication channels (neighborhood conversations, newspaper articles), a series of neural network models were developed to combine sales and claims data with weather, soils, and demographic data to produce a failure prediction model. Data were also combined to predict the local life cycle of claims activity. Claims dates were then combined with the previous data to predict regional claims around the nation.

Benefit to Client

By understanding where and why people are experiencing product problems, this company was able to make sound, well-researched decisions about whether/how to enhance their product and what markets offer the most and least potential for profitability or claims.

Challenge: What is really going on in a call center's text field "other"?

Solution

IHBI conducted an advanced text mining project of a call center's trouble ticket data to identify areas where the company's service level could improve. We also applied advanced text mining, clustering, and sequencing of a highly unstructured comment field to learn more about previously inaccessible product feedback residing in the center's "other" field.

Benefit to Client

With previously uncovered data now available, this company can understand what problems are being experienced with their product and address those. And they're also able to use their comment field to provide a structure that captures more useful information in the future.