Keithley program helps speed product development

Cleveland, O. – Keithley Instruments announced May 6 a program that will help its global Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) customers develop products faster, decrease development and warranty costs, increase production uptime, and reduce inventory. The Keithley OEM Advantage Program includes a number of benefits, including free 30-day loans of evaluation units, notification of component or software changes, extended warranties, a personal applications engineer, just-in-time delivery, and volume discounts.

“This program is particularly relevant given today’s manufacturing environment,” said David Howarth, Keithley’s business manager for OEMs and systems integrators.” We worked with our customers to understand the ways we can help them respond to increasing supply chain and time-to-market pressures.”

Mr. Howarth said the program is designed to address the particular concerns of OEMs. For example, because some OEM systems may take several months to build, the one-year warranty on a Keithley product often expired before the OEM’s own warranty did. Under the new program, Keithley products that currently have a one-year warranty will have warranties extended to two years, reducing the OEM’s financial risk. The dollar value of the extended warranties ranges up to $1000 per instrument.

OEMs are also unique in that minor component or software changes in an integrated system could have unexpected consequences for the end product, leading to an interruption in production. The Keithley OEM Advantage program gives OEM customers advance notification via email of significant software, firmware, or component changes. This gives OEM engineers time to evaluate the change and make adjustments in their products if necessary.

In addition, OEMs that require product on a scheduled basis can request just-in-time delivery, which preserves cash flow by reducing inventory. Although just-in-time delivery had been available previously on a case-by-case basis, this is the first time just-in-time delivery has been part of a formal program at Keithley.

Each OEM customer will be assigned a personal Keithley applications engineer, who will provide a consistent contact with the customer. The engineer assigned to an account will be knowledgeable about the OEM’s application, allowing faster, more expert support.

OEMs also have the opportunity to evaluate instruments during the design phase of a new system. Keithley offers free, 30-day loans of evaluation units, enabling OEM design engineers to accelerate the selection and development processes.

The program includes discounts for OEMs that order multiples of a Keithley product in volume, even if that volume is distributed over time to match the OEM’s selling and production cycles.

Control Engineering Daily News DeskGary A. Mintchell, senior editor gmintchell@cahners.com

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