{"id":447,"date":"2026-09-24T19:35:43","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T19:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/conexusindiana.com\/industryexchange\/?post_type=articles&p=447"},"modified":"2026-09-24T19:45:59","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T19:45:59","slug":"when-the-data-got-complicated-yamaha-marine-turned-to-the-classroom","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/conexusindiana.com\/industryexchange\/resources\/when-the-data-got-complicated-yamaha-marine-turned-to-the-classroom\/","title":{"rendered":"When the Data Got Complicated, Yamaha Marine Turned to the Classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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When the Data Got Complicated, Yamaha Marine Turned to the Classroom<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Yamaha Marine Precision Propellers, Inc.<\/strong><\/p>

Greenfield, Indiana<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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When Yamaha Marine Precision Propellers opened its new, fully automated foundry in Greenfield in 2021, the goal was straightforward: modernize a 1970s-era metal casting process and protect the company’s most valuable investment: its people. The new facility’s robotics and vision systems were built to improve safety and consistency in propeller casting.<\/p>

\u201cAutomation was never about reducing headcount,\u201d said Batuhan Ak, general manager at Yamaha Marine Precision Propellers (YPPI). \u201cWe actually gained headcount with this facility. It was about safety, efficiency and giving our people the tools to do their jobs better.\u201d<\/p>

But soon after \u201cflipping the switch,\u201d YPPI ran into a problem no one had planned for. The company’s scrap rate \u2014 the percentage of defective parts \u2014 climbed from 2% to more than 15%.<\/p>

\u201cWe thought we took the human variable out of the equation,\u201d Ak said. \u201cBut we didn\u2019t account for the new variables created by automation.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Following are highlights of how YPPI solved the problem and what other manufacturers can learn from it:<\/p>

  • Data alone isn’t the answer. <\/strong>YPPI’s automated foundry generated vast amounts of sensor and machine data, but the company had no in-house data science expertise to make sense of it and the new robotic pouring process behaved in ways their traditional process parameters didn’t anticipate or catch.<\/li>
  • Know when to look outside your own walls.<\/strong> Ak and his team explored outside vendors to help solve the problem, but the quotes far exceeded the budget of YPPI, a 160-person company. Rather than shelve the project, they looked for a different kind of partner.<\/li>
  • Partner with education to close the gap.<\/strong> YPPI turned to Purdue University\u2019s Data Mine, a student-driven research and analytics program that connects Indiana companies with cross-disciplinary teams of data science and engineering students. For a modest $10,000 per semester, Yamaha and the Data Mine launched a two-year collaboration to build machine learning models that could predict scrap before it occurred.<\/li>
  • Expect the first version to fall short and keep refining.<\/strong> \u201cIn the first year, our model had about 40% predictive accuracy,\u201d Ak said. \u201cBut by cleaning and refining the data with Purdue\u2019s team, we reached 94% predictive accuracy in detecting defects.\u201d That leap translated directly into production gains: YPPI\u2019s scrap rate dropped from more than 15% to less than 1%, saving the company more than $1 million annually.<\/li>
  • Treat clean data as the real deliverable.<\/strong> \u201cThe cleanliness of the data was the most important lesson we learned,\u201d Ak said. \u201cAnd there has to be a functional understanding of the business in order to vet both the process during AI development and the AI\u2019s output.\u201d Engineers who understood the casting process stayed closely involved throughout, translating what the models found into changes on the floor.<\/li><\/ul>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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    \"From a cost-savings standpoint, it's been astronomical. We're saving more than $1 million a year that used to go straight into scrap. This is the kind of return most small and mid-sized manufacturers can't afford to leave on the table.\"<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
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    Batuhan Ak<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
    General Manager, Yamaha Marine Precision Propellers<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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    YPPI\u2019s total investment in the project \u2014 about $40,000 over two years \u2014 has returned millions in savings and safeguarded the future of its state-of-the-art facility. The company is now expanding its business, offering casting services to other manufacturers who need the same level of precision and quality it achieved through AI.<\/p>

    \u201cI would be hard-pressed to think of any small or medium-sized business that wouldn\u2019t benefit from some form of AI,\u201d Ak said. \u201cIt\u2019s even more valuable for companies our size.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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    Yamaha Marine Precision Propellers<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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    Yamaha Marine Precision Propellers, Inc. (YPPI), headquartered in Greenfield, Indiana, manufactures precision boat propellers for Yamaha Marine and other customers. In 2021, the 160-person company opened a fully automated foundry incorporating robotics and vision systems to modernize its metal-casting process. YPPI has since partnered with Purdue University\u2019s Data Mine program to apply machine learning to quality control, and is now expanding into contract casting services for other manufacturers.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Discover how Yamaha Marine Precision Propellers’s new facility robotics and vision systems were built to improve safety and consistency in propeller casting. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":453,"template":"elementor_header_footer","topics":[7],"class_list":["post-447","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topics-roadmap-strategy"],"yoast_head":"\nWhen the Data Got Complicated, Yamaha Marine Turned to the Classroom<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/conexusindiana.com\/industryexchange\/resources\/when-the-data-got-complicated-yamaha-marine-turned-to-the-classroom\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"When the Data Got Complicated, Yamaha Marine Turned to the Classroom\" \/>\n<meta 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