About the Customer
For four decades, a U.S.-based manufacturer has been at the forefront of the emergency vehicle industry. Known for customer service, quality, and craftsmanship, this OEM produces life-saving vehicles. For its team, reliability isn’t just a metric — it’s a critical necessity.
Since 2012, HED has collaborated with this OEM to deliver ambulances that meet first responders’ exacting standards. As this company looked to the future, it sought to modernize vehicle architectures to better serve its highly specialized clientele.
The Challenge
In the world of emergency vehicles, every fleet has unique requirements. However, the OEM’s previous electrical architecture — a legacy multiplex system — was built on a rigid, centralized foundation. All inputs and outputs (I/O) were housed in a single control module, which created several critical bottlenecks.
First, the system used proprietary “black box” software, which blocked the OEM from making frequent customer-driven customizations. And physically, the single-module setup required massive, complex wire harnesses to be routed to a single point, increasing assembly time and creating significant warranty risks. If that one module failed, the entire vehicle was compromised.
Compounding these issues was a lack of rigorous quality control from the previous supplier, leading to unacceptable field failures in high-pressure emergency environments.
The Solution
To address these challenges, HED acted as a responsive collaborator, guiding the OEM toward a next-generation system that utilized zonal architecture. Unlike the previous centralized model, zonal architecture is a type of distributed system that physically separates I/O controls.
HED integrated high-performance displays and high-current control modules, providing a rugged hardware foundation. To solve the customization issue, HED implemented a cutting-edge production-floor configuration tool. This system allows the OEM to manage vehicle features via a standard Excel sheet. By simply defining options in the spreadsheet and downloading them to the system, the company can enable or disable features instantly.
This approach removed the need for outsourced programmers or specialized technicians, empowering the OEM to be a single-source provider for its own customers. Furthermore, the distributed nature of the system simplified the wire harnesses, resulting in shorter wire runs, reduced vehicle weight, and fewer points of failure.
The Results
The move to HED’s intelligent, distributed control system has delivered transformative results for both the OEM’s production line and its end-users. By streamlining the wiring architecture and simplifying the configuration process, the OEM has significantly increased production capacity and improved lead times — delivering critical life-saving vehicles to communities faster than ever before.
Key performance outcomes include:
- Unmatched field reliability: Since the implementation of the HED system, the OEM has reported zero issues in the field, a testament to HED’s commitment to high-reliability engineering and rigorous quality standards.
- Scalable innovation: Scalability is built into the new architecture, so the OEM can add control modules for advanced features, like a highly advanced camera system, without redesigning the entire system.
- Enhanced serviceability: With improved diagnostics and a distributed layout, troubleshooting is faster and more intuitive, ensuring ambulances spend more time on the road and less time in the shop.
- Future-proof flexibility: The Excel-based configuration tool has turned a once-rigid manufacturing process into a versatile, agile operation.
By moving away from proprietary limitations and toward HED’s zonal architecture, this emergency vehicle leader has reinforced its position as an industry pioneer, ensuring its ambulances remain as dependable as the heroes who drive them.
Interested in seeing how HED can help you? Contact us and let’s find out together.