IQS, which has been developing quality management software for 20 years, is planning a major upgrade to its product line. At a recent customer event, IQS unveiled version 6.8 of its Quality Performance Management product and said that the new offering will serve as the foundation for a Web-based product under development at the privately held company.
Expected to be available around the end of the second quarter of 2007, the Web-based product will have the same functionality as version 6.8 of Quality Performance Management and a similar user interface. Going forward, IQS intends to focus development efforts on a Java-based Web architecture. "We don't plan to retire 6.8, but we do plan to freeze it," said Michael Rapaport, IQS's president and CEO, in announcing the company's Web development strategy.
Advantages of the Web product, according to the company, include access from any browser, greater modularity, easier configuration, and lower total cost of ownership. Now at the mid-point in its development timetable, with code migration in progress, IQS invited customers to join its Manufacturing Quality Assurance Cooperative and participate in alpha and beta testing.
Meanwhile, version 6.8 is expected to be available in IQS's client-server and on-demand hosted environments in the fourth quarter of 2006. "We've been waiting for 6.8," said Jeffrey A. Jaswa, manager of supplier quality assurance at Akzo Nobel Coatings Inc., an IQS customer since 1993, in an on-site interview. "We are excited about its configurability and naming functionality."
The latter feature allows menus and screen headings to be renamed so each customer can replace the product's discrete manufacturing-derived syntax with its own terminology. Workflows and screens also can be customized according to user role or other parameters.
"Version 6.8 differentiates IQS from its competitors," says Simon Jacobson, a research analyst with AMR Research. "It serves as a technology wrapper around existing products and processes to do enterprise enablement."
IQS says version 6.8 also adds an analytics engine for real-time performance metrics, strengthens integration functionality to help users interface with other enterprise systems as well as customers and suppliers, and enhances project management functionality. New modules improve collaboration by connecting IQS to widely used tools like Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Project.
Also new is support of multi-site deployments and multiple languages. In addition to multilingual capability, IQS has expanded its international presence by forming alliances with partners in Europe and China.
This article originally appeared in the September 2006 issue of Managing Automation magazine.