Managing Automation - December 2008 - (Page 15)

news managingautomation.com maonline Go online for daily news updates in perspective Alliances, Executive Appointments, Mergers & Acquisitions, Products you are in the plant,” Gordon said. Users will also be able to view those same performance metrics at a remote plant, via a Web interface. This new tool in Kronos’ arsenal puts it squarely in the terrain of manufacturing intelligence and MES vendors, but company executives describe it as a natural extension of the product’s capabilities. In an interview at the conference, called KronosWorks, Aron Ain, the company’s CEO, characterized the machine tracking capability as a real-time complement to MES or ERP systems, which typically deliver batch reports on machine performance, not instantaneous KPIs. As for the rationale behind the new functionality, Gordon said it was mostly a matter of catching up with Kronos’ manufacturing customers, many of which had already customized their systems to deliver such equipment data. “Our customers are saying, ‘We’re using [Kronos] to measure people, but we also have machines We would really like to have one system that we can implement [to] measure machines and people and also understand where our WIP is.’ ” Workforce Central 6.1 will be available in the first quarter of 2009. — Chris Chiappinelli IQMS ROLLS OUT USER INTERFACE, OTHER UPGRADES QMS, a developer of ERP software for the automotive, medical, plastics, and rubber industries, recently announced enhancements to its software, including a personalized ERP user interface, an updated record navigator, and wireless real-time machine monitoring. Company officials told approximately 225 people attending the company’s annual user conference in Anaheim, CA, that the enhancements to the Enterprise IQ software, described as a single-source system running on the Oracle database, came from more than 1,400 customer requests over the past year. “Everything that we write is written in order to satisfy a need that they’ve discovered,” President Randy Flamm said in a keynote. “Nobody is smart enough to be able to anticipate all the things our customers are trying to achieve. But if they can communicate it, they can share with I us what their hopes are, and we bring to bear our technical expertise in our development.” IQMS not only tweaked its quality, CRM, and inventory modules, but also updated smaller features, such as the appearance and function of icons, password policy, internal help desk support, biometric security, and data dictionary. A pivotal enhancement was the ASSY1, which includes assembly process maintenance and assembly track and data. “Being customer-driven makes a big part of our process straightforward. We mainly concentrate on what our customers are trying to achieve in providing solutions,” Flamm said. “Some of the innovaRandy Flamm tions that we came up with — our smart page being concentric with the Web or bringing in Web content using the .NET framework — are going to be a big hit.” The functional improvements to the EnterpriseIQ system come at a time when IQMS appears to be growing its business in a number of ways. Flamm and other IQMS officials said at the user conference that the company posted an 18% increase in customers over the past year. This growth, they said, came from the company’s existing customer base as well as a rise in sales outside the plastics industry, where IQMS has a substantial footprint. A retention rate of over 98% “means that the revenue continues to flow from our current customers and it is partly because of their input that they are able to get updates at no cost,” Flamm said. “We are very customer-concentric. The other thing is that we’re increasing our market share. In these slow times, we’re ahead of our competitors. We have been able to increase our penetration in the market.” The company offers three configurations of EnterpriseIQ and is continuing its partnership with Oracle for that company’s business intelligence product. The BI product is said to be a complete system in a box with features such as reporting tools for invoices and shipping orders and a publisher, which can author, manage, and deliver to any destination. Oracle also offers Data Guard to IQMS customers, which protects against storage failures and errors. — Lauren Brousell http://www.managingautomation.com http://www.managingautomation.com/awards

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Managing Automation - December 2008

Managing Automation - December 2008 Contents Take 1 Business Objects Chief Says Union with SAP Meets Objectives After One Year Yes, Emerson, Too, Is in the MES Market Infor Chief Puts Off IPO, Restarts Buying Plans Kronos Now Tracks Shop Floor Machines IQMS Rolls Out User Interace, Other Upgrades Notes Five Ideas for Demand Planning Building on the SOA Blueprint Innovation Now A Team Effort Lean %2B Technology = LEAN^2 Finding Flaws Before They Spread Product Scan Advertiser Index Next

Managing Automation - December 2008

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