IQMS Blog for Manufacturing ERP Expertise

Today begins a new blog series offering a peek into the daily lives of IQMS’ directors. From human resources to testing and training to development, meet the key department leaders who are molding our company’s future and continually advancing the EnterpriseIQ ERP and MES software.

Social media and the authentic transparency of modern communication lend a certain casual intimacy to our information. We already know it all. What is posted as information can be assumed to be true and everyone can look up everything they need to know on the computer. But one still has to use some analytical skills to discern validity and proceed to make intelligent decisions.

Now that we have numerous customers using our new RTStations in their manufacturing facilities, I would like to take a moment and discuss the many uses this device offers. The second iteration of IQMS’ shop floor device, the RTStation 10.1, was soft launched a few months ago to our customers based on their valuable development feedback to the legacy RTStation (for example, the more modern version offers a larger screen (10 inch versus 7 inch) and wireless capabilities to allow more flexibility on the shop floor - Manufacturers can now mount the RTStation to a forklift for improved inventory tracking and warehouse management). Much of the success of a program like this is not possible without our customers’ valued input and it is always a great feeling to provide our users with products that resulted from their direction and feedback.

One of the most common questions the hardware group at IQMS receives from customers is: "How can we clock in our employees?" There are several technologies available to perform the clock in process in our manufacturing ERP software, EnterpriseIQ, but first I want to provide a little background on what is happening behind the scenes.

This week’s blog post was written by Training Specialist, Gabby Morris. Gabby recently celebrated her 12th year with IQMS and has helped, advised and celebrated the successes of hundreds of customers and employees with her compassion and talents.

A group of my friends get together once or twice a year to split wood. I live in a "many hands make light work" community, and as a bonus at the end, I get to go home with a pallet of wood. I've observed that, like a lot of day-to-day activities, you can liken splitting wood to repetitive manufacturing. 

If someone gave you a week of time, what would you do with it? A whole seven days is exactly what Nicolet Plastics, Inc. is delivering its customers with its innovative Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM) program. Through an enterprise-wide initiative that relentlessly emphasizes lead time reduction, Nicolet Plastics is revolutionizing time-based competition and make-to-order strategies to ensure manufacturing excellence (With impressive results - 2012 will be the best year in Nicolet Plastics' history, both in terms of revenue and earnings).

For those of you who have read some of my past blogs, you've heard me mention the IQMS SolidWorks add-in. I explained some of the integration our Automation department has done within SolidWorks, but I didn't go into much detail about what exactly the add-in does. In the past month, this application has seen some significant advancement in functionality that I can see being a huge benefit to our SolidWorks users. However, before I get into these new features, a little more detail of how the SolidWorks add-in works is in order:

Have you ever used something for years and then one day, out of the blue, you see someone do something with it that you didn't know was possible? You don't know whether to feel silly that you never figured it out or elated that you now know. It's not usually a major feature in the overall scheme of things, but it still would have been nice to know. 

It is just about the second quarter of 2013 and nearly five months since IQMS' last User Group. Believe it or not, we are already receiving requests for when the next User Group event will be! This is wonderful news because it reiterates the success of the last event and, more importantly, the validity of continuing this conference. But what goes into the preparation of User Group and when should clients plan to participate? Good questions.