Nlighten™ is the first application specifically designed to provide decision support capabilities to product engineers, enabling evaluation of alternative design scenarios and prediction of their respective lifecycle costs. Engineers can now understand and optimize lifecycle costs as a design variable, and apply more accurate and consistent ROI predictions for value improvement projects. Rapidly putting actual field data at engineers' fingertips, Nlighten provides quick and easy access to historical product and parts failure metrics. Engineers can access the information they need, when they need it, to make business-savvy design decisions.

Nlighten enables engineers to uncover hidden design and value-improvement opportunities from in-service product field data, and analyze the effectiveness and financial impact of their product design decisions -- past, present, and future. It alerts users to emerging product field issues in virtual real time, so that escalating operational costs and negative market exposure can be avoided. "We have received enthusiastic market response on Nlighten's ability to help boost manufacturers' profits by helping to reduce product lifecycle costs, such as warranty, while simultaneously improving customer loyalty," says NinaTek president/CEO Mike Barry.

"Typically about 30% or more of the design engineers' time is spent looking for the information they need to revise or design new products," says Lou Novoa, former chief engineer at Freightliner. "Usually the information is scattered throughout various systems, and is not easily accessible or in the form that makes it possible for designers to really use it to ensure each new product generation is better and more profitable than prior versions." Nlighten unifies product data from various sources, such as field service, warranty, and manufacturing, into a product analytic data model that helps make engineers much more efficient. Furthermore, Nlighten transforms complex statistical analysis into easy-to-use and understand metrics.

Following is a summary of Nlighten's benefits.

Improves product margins:

• Performs what-if lifecycle cost analysis on alternative design scenarios


• Optimizes lifecycle costs as a design variable


• Sets alerts to identify and resolve field performance issues early in the lifecycle


• Helps make more informed supplier and design re-use decisions.

Optimizes value improvement activities:

• Identifies and justifies lifecycle cost savings opportunities at the product and part level


• Monitors effectiveness of design changes in achieving cost reduction objectives.

Increases engineering efficiency:

• Enables quick and easy access to historical field product performance information


• Empowers design engineers to directly utilize and understand complex statistical analytics


• Provides access to relevant design changes to avoid engineering rework


• Replaces labor-intensive static reports with dynamic analytics and up-to-date information.

Authorized users can access web-based application with any popular web browser. A quick and easy no-risk trial program is available.