Yamaha Motor’s Robotic Division Uses Splashtop to Remotely Support IoT Devices
Reducing issue resolution time and maintaining IoT devices with Splashtop On-prem
Summary
A top priority of Yamaha’s customers in the Surface Mount Technology (SMT) industry is to improve manufacturing productivity. This means that the team at Yamaha’s SMT business receives various equipment customization requests, and they must quickly decide whether the customers’ requests can be realized.
Yamaha’s SMT business commercializes and manufactures all surface mounting equipment needed for IoT electronic boards in-house, under one brand. This allows them to effectively link all products and parts, and have an integrated technical, manufacturing and sales process. As a result, Yamaha’s SMT business can cater to their customers’ customization requests, and it gives them an edge over their competitors.
In addition to industrial machinery, their SMT business introduced an offering for remote maintenance service by providing a customer-specific support contact number for product inquiries and issues. Since their SMT business implemented Splashtop as their remote support solution, their technicians were able to significantly shorten response and resolution times, delighting their customers.
Mr. Masanobu Miyamoto, Chief of Development, Development Group, and Mr. Miharu Masui, Chief of Information Services, SMT Group share their Splashtop story.
The Challenge: Reducing Time to Resolution and Quickly Troubleshooting Customer Issues
Yamaha’s SMT business commercializes and manufactures all surface mounting equipment needed for IoT electronic boards in-house, under one brand. This allows them to effectively link all products and parts, and have an integrated technical, manufacturing and sales process. As a result, Yamaha’s SMT business can cater to customization requests, giving them an edge over competitors.
Prior to using Splashtop, Mr. Miharu Masui, Chief of Information Services, SMT Group and his IT team would identify the cause of technical issues by gathering information from their Windows-based SMT equipment and exchanging information with customers through files, emails and photographs.
In addition to industrial machinery, their SMT business introduced a remote maintenance service offering. They created a customer-specific support contact number for product inquiries and issues.
Mr. Masui said, “When a problem occurred, shortening the time to repair and recovery was a major issue. To resolve issues, equipment parts were often replaced. Service engineers would need to physically visit and perform repair work. Therefore, it was quite difficult to dramatically reduce service engineers' travel time and work time, given the current process.”
Since the dispatching time of the service engineer couldn’t be shortened, Mr. Masui and his team decided to shorten the time from when the customer contacted them to identify the cause, before dispatching the engineer. To do this, they chose Splashtop On-Prem.
The Solution: Yamaha's SMT Business Uses Splashtop’s On-Premise Solution to Remotely Support Their IoT Devices
With Splashtop, Yamaha’s SMT business’s remote maintenance service first obtains accurate and quick information about the root cause of the issue by remoting directly into the SMT IoT devices.
Mr. Masui said, “Up until now, we had to verbally communicate the status of the operation screens and the operation methods with the customer. As a result, sometimes we felt frustrated and stressed by each other. However, by being able to directly access the device and acquire error history and operation logs, we were able to reduce that stress at once.”
Top reasons why Yamaha’s SMT business chose Splashtop On-Prem:
On-premises deployment: To meet their stringent security requirements, their SMT business wanted a self-hosted solution, and Splashtop provided them with this option. They deployed the Splashtop Gateway on-premises and installed the Splashtop Streamer on the SMT equipment all over the world to enable remote access.
High performance and robust security: Splashtop provided their technicians with reliable remote connections enabling them to carry out stress-free troubleshooting and repair sessions with their customers. Splashtop also checked all their boxes from a security standpoint.
Suitable for remote support and training users: Mr. Masui said, “Since we can share our screen with the customer and vice-versa, and control the mouse, we can even train the users. Providing properly guided user training, and being able to replicate issues that the customer is having, improves the customer’s skill. We can securely train our customers, especially newly onboarded users. We are there whenever they need us.
“We can acquire information securely and more accurately than before without losing any time, and quickly take the required next step on the customer’s equipment. Using Splashtop On-Prem for remote support has significantly reduced the burden on our technicians as well as customers.
Mr. Masanobu Miyamoto, Chief of Development, Development Group added, “By introducing Splashtop, we think that we have created an environment that makes it easy to provide remote maintenance services 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.”
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Results: Leveraging Splashtop for Overseas Expansion Plans
Yamaha plans to expand its SMT business beyond Japan. Mr. Miyamoto said, “We are thinking of expanding overseas in the not-too-distant future. We believe that China, Europe and the Americas are also very motivated to incorporate IoT.”
Currently, dealers and distributors help the team support their overseas customers. Due to the time difference and language barriers, there was a significant delay in passing the necessary information required to troubleshoot issues. There was also a possibility that essential information was missed. Mr. Masui said, “Now, by providing remote maintenance services with Splashtop, we can acquire data directly from the equipment and accurately grasp when, where, and what happened.”
Splashtop will support Yamaha’s SMT business to expand globally and help effectively support customers worldwide.
Details
About Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd.
Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. is a Japanese manufacturer of motorcycles, marine products such as boats and outboard motors, and other motorized products. The Robotics division focuses on developing and selling surface mount technology (SMT) equipment or pick-and-place machines (P&Ps), industrial robots, and unmanned helicopters.
About Splashtop On-Prem
Splashtop On-Prem is a self-hosted, fast and secure remote access solution. With Splashtop On-Prem, organizations can not only give employees remote access to computers but also enable IT to remotely access, manage and support devices.
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