All technological products will eventually stop supplying and end their life cycle. Even industrial computers are inevitable. For application fields such as medical laboratories that require consistent device specifications, when the products are discontinued, whether or not customers can seamlessly connect to the updated hardware platform and meet the new needs at the same time is all about whether the industrial computer manufacturers can provide customer retention. Relying on detailed business feedback and customized services, DFI has successfully allowed the existing customers to continue to adopt new replacement products.
Region: Europe (sales worldwide)
Industry: Medical industry
Application: Bioreactor Management System
Solution: DFI's CS170-H310 industrial-grade motherboard and customized chassis from existing partners
The product upgrade cycle in the application field of industrial computers can be described as "one time for a long time." However, when a long-used product is facing the end of its life cycle, the ability to quickly find a suitable replacement product is essential, and the hope that the supply period of the successor product can be extended. Still, at the same time, the past and future specifications requirements for all industrial computers are a big challenge for manufacturers.
DFI initially used the DT122-HD industrial barebones (HD100-H81 motherboard, DT122 chassis) of Intel's fourth-generation Core processor (code-named Haswell) platform in a medical industry customer for a series of related applications, such as a bioreactor management system. But in the third quarter of 2019, this processor will terminate its supply period.
Therefore, this customer began to seek the next generation of models. In addition to the better performance and longer product life cycle, customers also generated two new requirements:
The front panel of the case requires a USB port.
6-port COM is necessary at the rear.
In addition, the most important thing is: the price cannot be higher than the previous generation products.
Therefore, DFI contacted its chassis partners in the shortest time, put forward multiple proposals for evaluation, therefore of taking full consideration of the sample delivery schedule, and prioritizing "products with the latest specifications in stock."
Finally, DFI satisfactorily satisfies the needs of customers.
- The case's front panel requires a USB port: the solution is to replace CS100-H310 with CS170-H310 because the former only has the USB pins on the board that can be pulled to the front panel.
- 6-port COM is required at the rear: it can be solved by installing a riser card.
- Because the customer does not need an optical disc drive, and it is a medical application scenario, DFI's partners have customized a case with white paint and no optical disc drive inlet and outlet holes for this purpose of being beautiful.
Therefore, this customer continues to be a partner of DFI and continues to sell this product to the world.
In addition to project customer service, DFI has also proposed a series of product transfer plans for Intel's fourth-generation products in recent years to enjoy effortless consistency and minimal transition costs, which proves that DFI is worthy of being the customers' trusted long-term partner.
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