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Quality Control

Two small software vendors this week released business intelligence product upgrades that will allow manufacturers to more accurately and rapidly assess the cost and quality of their products.

SigmaQuest Inc., a provider of on-demand product quality analysis tools, released version 6.1 of its flagship SigmaSure product, which adds several new features, including support for identifying potentially costly, low-quality “maverick” products before they are shipped.



At the same time, aPriori, a provider of cost management analysis software, delivered version 5.5 of its self-named tool, which, among other things, allows manufacturers to compute the cost of a single component manufactured in multiple internal or supplier plants.

The most significant new feature in the 6.1 release of SigmaQuest’s SigmaSure is support for analysis of maverick parts and products, a capability that is increasingly important to manufacturers of electronics components, SigmaQuest’s largest customer base. A maverick part is defined by the JEDEC Solid State Technology Association as an “atypical product that exhibits anomalistic characteristics causing higher-than-normal levels of failure in the end-user application.”



Maverick parts, for example, may fall within prescribed functional test parameters but still fail often in the field, leading to costly product returns. Many electronic equipment OEMs, said SigmaQuest CEO Nader Fathi, have begun to require component suppliers to certify that they have analyzed part lots for their potential to exhibit maverick behavior.

“Just looking at product yields is not good enough to determine if products will behave correctly,” Fathi told Managing Automation today.

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