One of the world’s leading OEM brands of electronic safety equipment produces a line of high-performance vehicle lights, including LED warning signals and directional beacons, commonly installed on fire engines, police cars, and recreational off-road vehicles. These types of lights must be especially durable for their operating environments, protected from water and dust by IP 67/68 standards: vacuum-sealed, impervious to water immersion below and above one meter. Having outgrown their longtime factory facilities in Europe, the customer was looking for major improvements in vehicle light product development and manufacturing: design enhancements and faster lead times. They also needed higher QA yield with more efficient delivery channels, all at competitive costs, with the overall ease of doing business.

Challenges

Through prior networking among senior management, our team highlighted their significant advantages, such as cost-savings in import tariffs and duties via their SEZ location, as well as hassle-free inward/outward logistics. We also discussed our well-developed ecosystem of cost-competitive component and materials suppliers, experienced electronics engineering expertise, and scalable high-mix, flexible volume manufacturing capacity. Our attractive benefits earned the customer’s confidence for an initial pilot build. We rapidly assembled a dedicated team for this new customer acquisition, including sales and marketing, engineering/NPI, supply chain coordination, and project management.

Our team devoted a two-week on-site visit at the customer’s headquarters to gather specifications and review product transfer requirements. This visit was followed by a schedule of regular updates and conference calls to ensure a proactive ramp-up over a 16-week initial timeframe. Our engineers began a thorough review of the customer’s vehicle light product line, primarily replacing outdated through-hole circuit board designs with more efficient solder-based surface mount technology (SMT) architecture. Every updated prototype was subsequently evaluated with a detailed initial sample inspection report (ISIR) to ensure continued compliance with the existing IP 67/68 product standards for vehicle lighting products.

During that same period, our supply chain management specialists solidified vendor commitments for all necessary parts and subcomponents, including mechanical, plastics, and reflective elements as required. They also recommended alternative sourcing for end-of-line (EOL) components and other unavailable or obsolete materials. Following customer approval of the improved prototypes, we laid the groundwork for scalable manufacturing at its flagship Chennai facility, allocating multiple production lines. We implemented a wide range of automated test equipment (ATE) for exceptional assurance, measuring basic product functions, including vehicle light flash rate. In addition to maintaining adherence to the necessary IP 67/68 standards for water immersion resistance.

These extensive QA checks have resulted in minimal customer complaints or required corrective actions, leading to higher, more reliable production rates than the customer’s previous OEM operations. Over the following years, our successful relationship with this customer has become a staple of our electronics OEM design and manufacturing services. Having further designed and introduced to the market over 100 additional variant product SKUs to date, a 35% annual increase, with a forecasted 50% growth over the next two years, per the customer’s internal projections.

Successes

We contribute our 40 years of design and manufacturing expertise spanning multiple diverse markets. We look forward to discussing how we can deliver world-class products for OEMs across the globe. We understand our home Indian market, familiar with its vast regulatory and selling environments. We foster growth opportunities within India through our strong technology incubation ecosystem. We also assist global OEMs in entering the Indian market by leveraging the local supply chain and favorable operating environments for cost reductions.

Our flagship Chennai location opened in 2006 and lies within a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) for electronics manufacturing, offering economic incentives for imports and exports. This primary facility is within 90 minutes of the Chennai seaport and 20 minutes to the international airport. Additional road and rail connectivity links to the rest of India and beyond and infrastructure advantages with faster import and export clearances. We also have labor force flexibility, both technical and manual, to scale to demand rapidly.

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