Understanding How Customers Use Your Products

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Rather than guess about how products are used (and abused) in the real world, manufacturers can get representative and accurate measures of their products in use. Once these data are analyzed, statistical information is used to help guide next generation product designs and manufacturing. This information allows products to be characterized more accurately, in contrast to relying on outdated engineering judgment or reference data.

For example:

What is the maximum load that users are putting on my product's window, crank, faucet handle, or brake pedal?
How many times will this door be opened, switch used, handle turned, latch activated, in the product's normal life?
What are the real duty cycles of the most difficult application my product sees and how does this relate to its life?
How does my product perform differently in Seattle, Seoul, Stockholm, or Sydney?

ITI's Customer Usage Profiling (CUP�) process defines product performance while in the hands of the customer. Direct measurements and statistical analysis remove the guesswork from product development. Usage profiling allows our clients to design and manufacture products with specific reliability, durability, and quality targets.

CUP saves our clients costs associated with:

Materials --- Decrease the likelihood of product/component under or over-designing in the early development stages.
Resources --- Decrease or eliminate the need to solve problems of products released to market and associated rework efforts
Liability -- Anticipate and eliminate potential high risk problem areas and scenarios
Warranties --- Locate system/component weaknesses and adjust design and manufacturing plans accordingly

Data Collection

ITI offers a range of data acquisition tests and related data collection equipment, along with the ability to manage the data with custom data management solutions or integration with your existing test information systems. ITI will custom-equip instrumentation and data acquisition systems including sensor and cabling ruggedization and environmental protection. To ensure natural use, some CUP tests provide automatic data capture and uploading with sensors and data acquisition hidden from view --- in some cases with users being completely autonomous. Tests may include on-board, miniature, battery powered computers for long-term data storage. A trigger system turns the computer on and off. Data stored in the computer can be readily downloaded for analysis as the test requires.

Customer Usage Profiling Services

Transducer Design & Development -- Turn product performance into measurable signals and process cycle counts wherever your product or equipment is in use

On-Site Field Testing -- Gather data for a day or a year; remote telemetry allows data to be downloaded from practically anywhere

Customer Clinics --- A mass of data is collected in a short time period as numerous customers run through scripted events using your product at an exhibition or other public event

Custom Component Measurements -- Where a conventional load cell might impede or distort data, we modify a component to become the sensor itself

Hardware Development -- Develop special geometries for load cells, providing the electronics "glue" connecting the sensors and data acquisition system, designing special attachment and calibration hardware

Instrumentation -- As a part of a testing program we are conducting with you or to support your testing team

Test Article Buildup & Packaging -- Components can be instrumented to measure the desired parameters and packaged with its hardware, ready to go, for use by your technical staff in your lab or at multiple sites

Data Acquisition -- Data from one to hundreds of channels is sampled simultaneously

Data Validation -- Ensure that the data corresponds to the physical realities of the situation and test objectives

Data Analysis -- Cumulative frequency distribution of loading over a usage profile, peak loadings, histograms, maximum occurrences dynamic range, time at levels --- each analysis speaks to a different design concern

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