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QUALITY ENGINEERED
SYSTEMS LTD. PRODUCT TRACKING AND MANAGEMENT NEWS VOLUME 2, No 2 , 2006 |
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Welcome back
to ONTRACK – a newsletter designed to keep our user
community in touch with what is happening at QES. We
are continually amazed at the pace of developments in our business and it
seems that there is a never ending menu of options for companies like QES to
pursue along our journey of continuous improvement of our products. Wireless applications, SOA, RFID
applications, Sarbanes Oxley requirements are just a few of the issues we
face daily here at QES. Life is trying at times, challenging always, but
never dull! BLACKBIRD continues to be a
popular package in the North American industry, particularly in the US South
as those mills replace aging legacy systems to improve efficiency,
take out costs and drive profitability.
Our teams will be spending a lot of time “down south” over the next
year as BLACKBIRD finds new homes and brings a competitive edge to our
clients operations. In our new product feature, we showcase
qBizConnector, now released in Version 2, a tremendously useful package
competing in the middleware space. It
is used for all interface development here at QES and a runtime version is
included in every BLACKBIRD implementation to manage data movement between
systems on a real time basis. Instead of a customer news item this issue, I
wanted to introduce everyone to Dendroctonus ponderosae (Scolytidae) – Now
that’s a mouthful. Long name, small insect,
big problem. Read about this little
problem for the forest industry (the Mountain Pine Beetle) below. |
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CONTINUING GROWTH BLACKBIRD'S NEWEST HOMES |
BLACKBIRD'S Next Homes In a flurry of activity over the last few months,
we now know where the next homes for our BLACKBIRD PTMS software will
be. Over the coming months we will be
very busy in the US South. We are
currently implementing BLACKBIRD at one site which will go live in Q4 this
year. We have also completed the
requirements definition for another site in the south and look forward to
continuing that project
in Q4 also. A bit closer
to home, we recently completed the requirements analysis for another mill in
BC and hope to continue that project next year. We will soon have over 30 production lines
managed by BLACKBIRD and will also be in the double digits for business
systems installed to handle pulp and paper sales. The new site we are currently working on in the US
South also means that with the exception of We will bring more details of the new projects in
the next edition of ONTRACK but these installs will prove to be the most
powerful ever as QES adds more and more functionality to its core product. |
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NEW PRODUCT RELEASE The Future of Inter-System Communications |
qBizConnector is a system that connects you to your
customers, suppliers, and other business partners through electronic document
exchange and data from your BLACKBIRD database. qBizConnector provides secure, low-cost,
configurable data transfer over the internet or using dedicated lines. qBiz
was developed by QES with a few specific goals in mind: ·
Save our
clients money ·
Save our
clients time ·
Reduce clients
reliance on outside contractors qBiz competes in the same space as far more
expensive packages as “Middleware” or systems that enable seamless transfer
of data between disparate IT packages.
qBiz has already proved its worth in providing fast, client configurable
interfaces to large ERP implementations as well as smaller accounting
packages. A runtime version of qBiz is included with every BLACKBIRD
implementation and clients have the option of acquiring a full qBiz license
to do their own interface development and modifications. The runtime version of qBizConnector is the engine
behind the new qMunicator package being offered to QES clients this
year. qMunicator is a system for fast
configurable set up of auto faxing and auto emailing of routine documents
from any business system running on one of the popular database systems. More details in a future issue of ONTRACK |
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BLACKBIRD 2 Released!! |
BLACKBIRD 2 Released We are very excited to have released the latest
version of our application suite - BLACKBIRD 2. Some of the significant changes in this
release include full enterprise support for both Oracle and SQL Server, a
completely integrated system for planning, scheduling and trimming, and
powerful transportation cost management capabilities. In addition we have finished and will be announcing
the release of updates of a number of other products. Scheduled for general release in the next
few months are PTMS 6, qBiz Connector 2, Mapper 2 as well as a brand new
product qScale. Contact QES to learn more about these new and
exciting products or to schedule a web demo for your site. |
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Schedule Optimization With BLACKBIRD and X-Trim |
Scheduling and Trimming Last issue, the capabilities of X-Trim were
introduced showing that almost anyone who makes roll products would benefit
from the use of X-Trim. Now any trim optimization
package needs another critical piece to be truly effective and that is a
block scheduling package to organize the production runs to meet delivery
restrictions imposed by customers, mill operations, transportation suppliers
and quality restrictions. QES can offer clients a range of solutions to their
block scheduling needs. For large
multi-machine, multi-site, complex operations, with multiple downstream
operations which require extensive schedule optimization, Greycon’s S-Plan is
the industry’s premier finite capacity schedule optimizer. For operations whose needs are somewhat
less complex, such as several machines at a single site, QES offers its own
Block Scheduling capability as part of BLACKBIRD. In BLACKBIRD, Block Scheduling is handled by an
extremely powerful and easy to use module that integrates tightly with X-Trim
and with the rest of the business functionality of BLACKBIRD. Developed by the same group that brought
you qBizConnector, clients can be sure they are receiving a highly
configurable, feature laden product . BLACKBIRD Block Scheduling accepts orders,
organizes them into blocks and runs and performs a real time analysis of the
impact of shipping restrictions. When
an acceptable schedule is complete, Block Scheduler then exports the blocks
and runs to X-Trim where the final machine trim schedule is completed. |
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Quality Management Software |
QUALITYCHECK Last issue, it was pointed out that QualityCheck
from QES is widely used in a variety of applications across many
industries. Why is it so popular? Like all QES packages, it delivers
outstanding value and capability. When
implemented with a PIMS system, a client has the most sought after features
of a full LIM System. QualityCheck’s outstanding feature is
“Configurability”. Which means that
clients do not need expensive customizations to fit QualityCheck to their
needs. Its just a matter of configuring
the software at startup to meet the demands of the organization. QualityCheck can be configured to manage
small individual plants or it can be configured to manage quality activities
at numerous plants in different countries from a central server. QualityCheck is often packaged with LabLink to
offer direct connections to lab testing equipment, eliminating laborious and
error prone manual transcription of test data into a computer. Another benefit that flows from this
combination is the elimination of “write-in” tests. With LabLink/QualityCheck , all tests must
be done and are logged in audit logs to ensure proper testing regimes are
maintained. QualityCheck is now in Version 6.0 offering many
new features, including full browser support. |
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New Representation QES is spreading its reach again this year, looking
to add a representative in QES already has a number of installations of Lab.21
in South America, all handled by our long time partners at Aspen
Technologies, however until now, there has been almost no direct activity by
QES in this fast growing region. Negotiations are underway with a very well known
and technically strong group to represent QES first in a sales and marketing
role and then later to act as the QES Support office for More on this in a future edition of ONTRACK. |
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CUSTOMERS IN THE NEWS Pine Beetle Problems |
BC - Central and Northern This is really not a note exclusively about a particular customer but rather about a number of our clients and the Pine Beetle infestation that has devastated the forest resource in central and northern BC. Several of QES’s clients are major players in that region and will be facing a variety of impacts from the infestation. The beetle infestation has killed or is killing millions of hectares of lodgepole pine forest in BC. The impacts on the forest industry are huge – the dead or dying trees must be harvested quickly to reap some economic value from them as well as to prevent the buildup of a huge inventory of dead fuel for forest fires. So in the near future there will be a glut of wood available to the industry there, but in 8 – 10 years time, there will be shortages that will have a huge impact on the companies there. To learn more about the problem, its impact on the forest resource and how companies are responding, have a look at one of the links below. http://www.pfc.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/entomology/mpb/index_e.html http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/HFP/mountain_pine_beetle/facts.htm
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