By Alex Smith |
Agricultural and construction equipment manufacturer CNH is using IGear’s Squeaks platform within Microsoft Teams to standardise factory-floor workflows, improve response times and reduce quality issues across its production sites.
CNH is using Microsoft Teams to improve how its production sites identify and resolve factory-floor issues. By integrating IGear’s Squeaks manufacturing platform into Teams, the company is bringing operational alerts, guided workflows and real-time collaboration into a single environment.
Across CNH’s nine North American production sites, factory-floor events such as quality defects, missing parts and conveyor stoppages generate hundreds of alerts every shift. Previously, responding to these issues relied on radio communications, text messages and manual follow-ups, meaning supervisors could learn about problems only at the end of a shift.
The lack of a shared process also meant that similar issues could be handled differently across shifts, production lines and plants. CNH needed a standardised approach that would direct events to the appropriate responders, track resolution and retain information for future analysis.
“We were looking for a flexible solution that required less internal company resources to deploy,” says Aron Oechsner, regional manufacturing engineering manager at CNH.
The company selected IGear’s Squeaks platform, which captures operational events from machines, systems and workers on the production floor. Developed with implementation support from Concept Reply, the platform is embedded in Microsoft Teams, CNH’s existing collaboration environment, allowing employees to manage alerts and coordinate responses without switching between applications.
“The beauty of Squeaks being in Teams is that it’s where everybody already is,” says Sriram Ashok, plant manager at CNH’s Racine facility. “I can see data coming in, react to it, and collaborate – all without switching to another tool. It’s completely embedded in our day.”
The integration directs events, including fluid leaks, torque failures and production-line stoppages, to the relevant responders with supporting information and step-by-step guidance. Workers can acknowledge responsibility, attach photographs and update the status of an issue within Teams, while automatic escalation helps ensure that events are addressed within defined timeframes.
“Because they’re bringing operational events into the Teams environment everyone is already in, they know sooner and act faster,” said Celine Mbanasor, director of customer success at IGear. “The alert is immediate and targeted, and from there they have step-by-step guidance directly within Teams on what to do next.”
Embedding the platform in an application employees already use also helps simplify onboarding and encourage adoption. By bringing alerts and resolution workflows into an established working environment, CNH can reduce the need for employees to learn and switch between separate tools.
Four CNH plants currently use the Squeaks and Teams integration, with a corporate initiative to extend deployment across North American sites. The company is also considering a wider rollout that could reach more than 30 plants globally.
CNH is already seeing improvements in first-time quality and a reduction in offline repairs following assembly. These improvements reflect the potential for earlier identification and resolution of production issues to reduce the need for corrective work after equipment has moved beyond the relevant manufacturing stage.
The company is also exploring how artificial intelligence could further support its manufacturing operations. For Ashok, the priority is to use Microsoft Copilot and Teams to reduce repetitive work and allow employees to concentrate on problem-solving.
“With Microsoft Copilot and Teams, the question is how we solve problems in the most efficient way,” he says. “At the end of the day, I want to take redundant tasks away so people can focus on thinking and solving problems,” he says.
Oechsner says the integration has also changed his perspective on Microsoft’s role in manufacturing. “Microsoft has always been a strong suite of applications for us to lean on, but I didn’t necessarily see it as the company that would help take manufacturing to the next level,” he says. “The integration, especially combined with AI, is helping change that paradigm.”