Mitigating RISK in Vehicle Repossession Using Temporal's Durable Execution

TechFabric, implemented a durable execution solution for a vehicle repossession company.

This case study demonstrates how Temporal's workflow orchestration capabilities ensured reliable and fault-tolerant processing of crucial assignments.

Background:

In the vehicle repossession industry, banks send "Closed” status on repossession assignments when they want to halt repossession proceedings on a vehicle. It is imperative that assignment’s “Closed” status reach repossession agents promptly and reliably.  

Failure to transmit these “Closed” status can result in "wrongful repos" - where a vehicle is repossessed despite the bank's instruction to stop the process.  

Wrongful repos carry severe penalties and can damage relationships between banks and customers.

Challenge

The current process had several challenges:

• API failures sometimes prevented “Closed” status from reaching vendors
• No reliable retry mechanism for failed transmissions
• Lack of visibility into any failures on transmission of the status of assignments

These issues exposed the company to the risk of wrongful repos and associated penalties.

Solution

Tech Fabric implemented Temporal's durable execution framework to address these challenges:  

1. Workflow Orchestration: A workflow was designed to handle the entire lifecycle of a close assignment, from receipt to successful transmission to the vendor. ‍
2. State Management: Temporal's state management capabilities ensured that the status of each assignment was persistently stored and could be recovered in case of system failures.  ‍
3. Retry Mechanism:  
   • The workflow incorporated automatic retries (#5) for failed API calls, with configurable backoff periods.  
   • If multiple retries failed, this activity would trigger notifications to the operations team for manual intervention. ‍
4. Event Sourcing: All actions and state changes were recorded as events, allowing for complete auditability and the ability to reconstruct the state of any assignment.
5. ‍Real-time Status Tracking: Temporal's Web UI provided a real-time view of all running workflows, allowing operators to quickly identify and troubleshoot any issues.

1. Debugging Capabilities: Temporal's ability to replay workflows from any point in their execution history significantly improved debugging processes.
2. ‍Distributed Coordination: Temporal's distributed architecture ensured high availability and fault tolerance, crucial for a 24/7 operation.

Results

By leveraging Temporal's durable execution capabilities, the vehicle repossession company significantly improved the reliability and efficiency of their Assignment “Closed” status process.  

The solution not only mitigated the risk of wrongful repos but also enhanced overall operational visibility and scalability.  

This case study demonstrates the power of durable execution in mission-critical processes where failure is not an option.  

Tech Fabric’s implementation of Temporal's framework provided the necessary tools to build a robust, fault-tolerant system that could withstand the challenges of a complex, distributed environment