The Challenge
The OEM had moved its spider-lift assembly to a domestic line but kept buying the on-board charger from an overseas supplier. The charger was the last imported component holding up full localisation, and it was making the schedule worse on three fronts.
Unit cost was high. The imported charger ate margin that the rest of the bill-of-materials had been driven down hard to recover.
Lead time was unpredictable. Ocean freight, customs windows, and the supplier's own batch cycles meant the OEM couldn't promise its sales team a delivery date for the finished machine without a buffer measured in weeks.
Engineering iteration was the slowest part. When a body redesign needed a connector change or a mounting-pattern change, the overseas supplier ran the request through its own engineering queue. Turnarounds were measured in months. Two new-platform launches in a row slipped because the charger spec couldn't keep up with the body design.
The Solution
Alternative Track's engineering team took the spider-lift's installation drawings, the target electrical spec, and the OEM's connector and mounting preferences, and shipped a sample of a custom-spec ALT-1700 inside a week. The 1680W rating matched the platform's duty cycle. Connector orientation and mounting pattern were laid out to drop straight into the existing harness and chassis brackets.
On the bench, the sample passed the OEM's electrical and environmental tests against the operating profile of the lift. Charge behaviour matched the battery pack the OEM had standardised on, and the IP67 enclosure cleared the same dust and vibration tests as the rest of the powertrain.
On commercial terms, the unit cost came in below half of what the imported charger was costing landed. The OEM brought the charger into the same domestic supply chain it had built for the rest of the machine.
Deployment
The ALT-1700 is on the OEM's configured-list as a charger option on the spider-lift line. Initial production runs are factory-fitted to small batches, with full series adoption tracking the OEM's own ramp on the platform.
The Result
The charger is no longer the localisation gate. The OEM's lead-time promise to its sales team is now controlled by the same domestic supply chain as the rest of the machine, instead of an overseas batch cycle.
Engineering iteration runs at domestic pace. When the next platform revision needs a connector or layout change, the change order goes through Alternative Track's local engineering team and comes back in days, not months.
Margin recovered. Half-the-cost unit pricing on the charger goes straight onto the contribution margin of every spider lift the OEM ships.