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Overview

East Manufacturing significantly reduces costs and improves claim processing time from an average of 35 days to 10 days by leveraging Optimum Info’s Warranty Management solution

Founded in 1968, East Manufacturing has grown to become a multiple product, leading trailer manufacturer that employs over 500 people with facilities comprised of approximately 600,000 square feet of manufacturing and warehouse space. The company sells through a network of over 75 dealer locations across North America.

East Manufacturing offers aluminum trailers, hydraulics, pneumatics, toolboxes, fenders, flatbeds, drop decks, and heavy-duty truck accessories. The company aims to provide their customers with superior operational performance, strength, durability and longevity, while providing top value.

Challenges that Necessitated a Change

Blue quotation marksThe system we had in place required customers to submit paper forms and there was no connection with ERP nor retrievable data. We looked at a few other solutions but felt that Optimum’s expertise and willingness to work with us made it a no-brainer!Blue quotation marks


East Manufacturing processes around 2000 warranty claims for its dealers and fleet customers annually. The company was using a manual process that required customers to submit claims through emails / faxes. This manual process required several days to fully review, and process claims and also involved several back and forth emails with customers to get details of each warranty claim.

It was also difficult to analyze the warranty costs at a detailed level and the company could rarely recover any of the warranty costs from their suppliers even though those parts had existing supplier warranty.

East started looking for another system with one specific requirement: to be tailor-made to address the needs of the automotive/ transportation industry.

Implementing an Industry-Specific Solution

Blue quotation marksChange isn’t always easy but the switch from our old antiquated system to Optimum has been smooth and painless with very little downtime or loss of productivity during the changeover!Blue quotation marks


Thanks to the team’s expertise and their willingness to adapt the system around the customer’s needs, Optimum Info’s Warranty Management solution became a no-brainer. What really stood out to East Manufacturing was Optimum’s ability to offer

  • Customizable reports, dashboards and warranty policies
  • Importable/ exportable data files
  • Automation of the Warranty claim process
  • World-class customer service

It took only 2 months for the system to be fully implemented and rolled out to East Manufacturing’s pilot dealers. From the test phase to post-launch, Optimum provided intuitive documentation and frequent meetings to ensure all users were able to utilize the full capabilities of the system. Once users started getting familiar with the system, Optimum received raving feedback on how the Warranty Management solution made their work so much easier.

In Their Own Words

Executives in the Warranty and IT department at East Manufacturing describe the benefits of the solution

  • Our claim processing time averages 10 days with the use of Optimum’s solution. Prior to Optimum, we averaged 35 days to process a claim (paper forms had to be mailed back and forth to our dealers).
  • We have greatly reduced our costs with eliminating carbon copy forms, drastically reduced our postage costs, reduced the need to print off claims and paperwork. All e-mails, pictures, trailer specs, labor invoices, freight invoices, etc. are attached to each claim and visible to both internal and external users.
  • Prior to Optimum we had to make a paper folder for each claim and all the information was printed out and put in the paper file, which then had to be filed. We used to store approximately 12-15 file boxes a year taking up valuable office space. We now have 3 boxes a year to store.
The results
For a company that processes about 2,000 warranty claims annually, corporate management and dealers alike observed considerable improvements in the following areas

  • Easy access to in-depth and more accurate data to make informed decisions
  • No more manual work needed to create reports – Everything is now automated, intuitive and accurate
  • Trends are easily identifiable to improve products
  • Interactions with dealers and customers is now streamlined and documented with almost-immediate replies and updates when processing claims
  • All claim payments can be tracked with real-time data
  • Significant cost-reductions
  • Productivity has vastly improved with quicker repairs
  • Better customer satisfaction

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