Technology & Automation
Barcodes: Improving Manufacturing One Scan at a Time
What did we do before barcodes? Many of you may not remember a time when the use of barcodes wasn’t prevalent. To purchase $50 in groceries, which used to be a lot of food, you would have to wait for the checker
... ContinuedManufacturing Downtime Prevention with Effective IT Management
Downtime can represent a significant loss in operating efficiency if not managed properly. While many resources are expended on analyzing and optimizing efficiencies on the shop floor, some basic areas of critical importance outside of the manufacturing heart of a business
... ContinuedManufacturing Errors: Don’t Ignore Simple Answers to Complex Problems
Manufacturing errors are often masked with symptoms that lead us away from the root cause. I recently had an experience I would like to share with you that sheds some light on this concept and it involved one of our RealTime Production
... ContinuedAdding a New Manufacturing Plant to Your ERP System? No Problem.
When you think of an ERP implementation, one of the first things that usually comes to mind is the process of converting your whole business from one system to a new one. A subset of the total business system conversion is
... ContinuedA Sneak Peek Into IQMS’ Upcoming Applications – Part II
IQMS‘ Automation Department has some additional exciting projects to tell you about. In the first part of this blog series, I mentioned some inside information on the latest technology coming out of the Automation Department, such as RealTime™ Process Monitoring and Android tablet applications. Now
... Continued5 Key ERP Security Features to Satisfy Strict User Traceability
With all of the regulations put upon the different manufacturing industries, one important consideration when selecting manufacturing ERP software is user traceability. Regulators not only want to know that there is traceability on the manufacturing of the product, but they also are enforcing
... Continued15 Years of Manufacturing Shop Floor Control
As we approach the end of the year (I know, it’s too soon), I thought I would take a moment to reflect on the EnterpriseIQ RealTime products. For those who have been with IQMS awhile, you may recall the genesis of our
... ContinuedA Sneak Peek into IQMS’ Upcoming Applications – Part I
IQMS‘ Automation Department has been busy this year. We’ve been working on some cutting edge applications: RealTime™ Process Monitoring with PLC communication, Android phone applications and EnterpriseIQ shop floor applications for the Android 3.0 tablets! These applications are harnessing the latest technology
... ContinuedAre Tablets Just Hype in Manufacturing?
Recently, I was watching a movie from the 1970s and I couldn’t help but notice that in all the office settings there were no computers. The height of technology was a single typewriter, on a secretary’s desk, and a rotary dial
... ContinuedFive Reasons to Consider an ERP Sandbox
As a child, many of life’s lessons were learned in the sandbox at school. It is where we learned to share and to be kind to others. It is where we learned that jumping from the top of the monkey bars
... ContinuedShop Floor Automation – Manufacturing ERP’s Next Frontier
IQMS was in the business of manufacturing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software long before it became known as ERP. In the 22 years that I have been in this industry, I have seen the footprint of ERP applications expand at a steady rate.
... ContinuedDecoding Barcodes: IQMS Welcomes 2D Barcodes to the Shop Floor
Recently, we’ve seen new barcode standards emerging. Almost everyone is familiar with UPC barcodes (found, for example, on the containers of grocery items), that have reduced the amount of manual data entry and increased the amount of data that can be
... ContinuedHow to Prepare for a Smooth ERP Software Update
If there is one infallible truth in manufacturing ERP software, it’s that you will never run out of things to learn. Technology is always changing and regardless of whether you hate change or thrive on it, it is coming. So how
... ContinuedMobile Application Software for the Manufacturing Shop Floor
I grew up in the 60s and I don’t mind admitting that I really liked the Star Trek series. It was about the future, it had adventure and it always ended with a moral theme. Captain Kirk and his crew would use technology
... ContinuedTake Charge of Your Vendor Sales Orders with EDI
Many manufacturing ERP software users understand the benefit of using electronic data interchange (EDI) to facilitate communication with their customers. EnterpriseIQ‘s EDI/eCommerce module provides functionality to receive orders and acknowledgments and send shipping notices and invoices, plus many other transactions needed in regular day
... Continued