SANTA CLARA, Calif., October 25, 2004 - SigmaQuest (TM) Inc., the enterprise software company whose solutions provide unprecedented insight and actionable information to ensure product and process integrity, by collecting, aggregating and analyzing test and quality data, today announced the immediate availability of SigmaSure Enterprise Edition.   This new Web-architected, global- product quality and performance-intelligence software enables users to eliminate organization inefficiencies, reduce manufacturing-transformation costs and improve product quality and reliability.

"Today's product design and manufacturing organizations are seeking better means to control and oversee development practices to reduce time-to-market cycles, lower costs, avoid costly product respins and recalls.   To do this, they need real-time access to a single cohesive view of distributed data throughout the entire organization, which can also include third-party manufacturing centers.   Yet, until now, test and manufacturing data has only been available to a few select engineering teams and not to broader groups such as financial or supplier-management organizations," said Nader Fathi, CEO of SigmaQuest.   "SigmaSure Enterprise Edition, our fourth-generation solution, targets electronic to medical device manufacturers who need to manage and improve their product performance throughout the lifecycle while reducing costs and risks for high-volume and mission-critical products such as network storage, wireless, pacemakers, Bluetooth headset and other offerings.   They can readily understand how their product is performing to specification in the lab, throughout manufacturing and in the field, and it gives them the means to quickly make changes when problems arise."

Ruzbeh Shariff, electrical engineering at a leading medical device manufacturer in San Jose, California stated, "The SigmaSure solution has filled a major gap between our test systems, engineering and operations departments.  The SigmaSure Enterprise Edition's new dashboard has also enabled one dynamic universe of data with many individual views so our team can get the data they want and when they want it.  We found SigmaSure Enterprise Solution to be easy to install and easy to use with almost no formal training."

SigmaSure Enterprise Edition extends SigmaQuest's core technology, which is a suite of web-architected software applications for real-time collection, aggregation and analysis of data and process data across globally-dispersed organizations, and enhances it with revolutionary new features for managing quality from product conception through product retirement.   The new features include:

Personalized Dashboard meets the needs of enterprise users who require a fast, flexible system with customized analysis, reports and alarms in a user-friendly format.   Users receive actionable information specific to their industry, product, factory, operator and more to help them make faster and smarter business decisions about product failure trends, supplier performance, and product quality across the globe.   Users can schedule to atomically refresh this dashboard and dynamically drill down to the root-cause of any discrepancies between anticipated and actual results.

Discovery Wizards are the first automated drilldowns that incorporate industry-best practices for knowledge discovery.   These practices have been observed and documented by SigmaQuest through years of experience working closely with customers through the data analysis process to resolve and prevent problems.   The Wizards employ SigmaQuest patent-pending algorithms to literally "walk" users through the discovery process to understand what is failing the most often and why .   They are designed to accelerate problem detection and provide insights into resolution and prevention.  Types of Wizards offered include:

Bonepile Wizards which automatically identifies which test stations, fixtures and measurements are failing the most

Yield Wizards enable the user to identify which test stations, fixtures and measurements produce the highest and lowest yields

Retest Wizards identify which serial numbers are retested the most by providing a Device History Record (DHR)

Failure Wizards report which tests, subtests, and measurements fail the most often.

Trace, this module captures the "as built configuration" to provide a complete genealogy record for each unit that is manufactured and shipped.   This is a requirement for all companies that need to tie-in quality with genealogy.

Remote Test Station Manager, engineers can now manage the health of test stations and control tester software versions across all sites, and do so remotely from their desktop.

"SigmaQuest continues to be a valuable alliance partner for National Instruments as its SigmaSure product offering provides our mutual customers with the ability to capture, access, and analyze test results in distributed design, test and manufacturing environments," noted Richard McDonell, software technologies marketing team manager at National Instruments (Nasdaq: NATI).  "The SigmaSure Enterprise Edition product, with its enterprise-level features including Personalized Dashboard and Discovery Wizards, facilitates accelerated problem detection, resolution, and insight by leveraging test data across the entire organization."

"SigmaSure Enterprise Edition helps our customers gain knowledge into product development and manufacturing challenges throughout product lifecycles," said Al Alaverdi, vice president of technology at SigmaQuest.   "The most revolutionary aspect of this offering is that it gives users real-time insight into how to improve products and processes.   This new offering will also help our customers drive consistency in test and analysis and remove some of the variables in the diagnostic process that help them better meet product specifications."

How SigmaSure Works 

SigmaSure's application program interface (SigmaProbe) is inserted into any test executive or diagnostic in order to extract test data in a highly structured but flexible XML format. Data collected is then stored into the SigmaConnect Server through Web services. The entire data set, or a subset, can be synchronized via the Internet with other Connect Servers across a global network. Using SigmaAnalysis, a Web-architect analytics module, users can then generate dynamic reports such as first pass yield run charts, Pareto of test failures, etc. and post them on their user-definable dashboard for automatic updates.

SigmaSure Enterprise Edition, available today, was successfully beta tested with seven customers worldwide. SigmaSure Enterprise Edition is available immediately on all Linux, Windows, Unix, and Mac platforms.   It includes an embedded enterprise database that runs on any ordinary Web browser including Microsoft IE, Mozilla, FireFox and Apple Safari. Pricing information is available upon request.

About SigmaQuest

SigmaQuest Inc. is an enterprise software company whose solutions provide unprecedented insight and actionable information to ensure product and process integrity, by collecting, aggregating and analyzing test and quality data. Its solutions enable global enterprises and their partners to optimize product time-to-market, cost and quality.   This is accomplished through personalized views of product quality information, pro-active alerts and comprehensive traceability - all in real-time.

The company is headquartered at 2901 Tasman Drive, Suite 109, Santa Clara, CA 95054.   

It can also be reached at 408-654-9401, www.sigmaquest.com .

SigmaQuest is trademark of SigmaQuest, Inc.   All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.