SANTA CLARA, Calif., June 26, 2006--SigmaQuest ™ Inc., the leading provider of software for managing product quality throughout manufacturing and a product’s lifecycle, today introduced SigmaSure RMA Insight, a web-based software solution that enables OEMs to gain real-time comprehensive knowledge of products returned by end users.  The software aggregates data from various data sources including return material authorization (RMA) databases so users can quickly learn the root causes of product defects and gain other statistical knowledge about product performance trends.   The solution is targeted to OEMs that manufacture products with electronics components seeking to reduce service and warranty costs and maintain an excellent reputation with their customer base.

“The goal of any OEM is to eliminate product returns, and we learned from listening to our OEM customers--with products that can include hundreds if not thousands of parts from multiple sources including suppliers and subcontract manufacturers--that there aren’t any sufficient off-the-shelf software systems that effectively correlate information on the types and quantities of parts or products that are failing, following the shipment of their products to the market,” said Nader Fathi, CEO at SigmaQuest.  “In fact, the current alternative is to upload their data into spreadsheets and try to analyze the information manually.  This is error prone and can take weeks to correlate.  With SigmaSure RMA Insight, our customers can pull together data from disparate RMA databases and quickly drill down to get a ‘single view of the truth,’ in terms of what, when, where and how failures occur.  With this type of information, OEMs can more quickly make product upgrades and notify their supplier and customers faster when recalls are required.  Also, they can ensure that the right amount of spare parts or replacement inventory is available.”

RMA data often is provided in different formats.  For example, when electronics products such as PDAs or personal digital cameras are returned, product data is entered into the RMA system directly through the manufacturer’s call center or via the retail outlets (such as Fry’s and Best Buy), while medical device problems are usually identified by doctors’ offices or hospitals.  All of these institutions tend to use varying applications or internally developed systems for entering product return or defect data.  SigmaSure RMA Insight enables OEMs’ quality assurance, engineering, operations and customer service departments or even resident CFOs to easily access RMA information from these disparate database systems and gain instant views that promptly drill down to the root cause of problems.  Moreover, specific details can be tracked such as product serial number, the quantity and percent of products shipped with defects, the specific parts or components causing the defects, the status of the repair and other relevant data.  This information can then be tied to into manufacturing test and supplier quality all in real-time.

According to Harvey Scheingold, director of quality process management at Calix Networks, the largest telecom equipment provider focused solely on broadband access solutions, “As Calix’s business grows with an expanding portfolio of product offerings, we want to ensure that we continue to deliver the best products and support possible to our customers.  We wanted to implement a comprehensive system that would enable us to analyze product return data, track trends and get to the root cause of issues with extensive drill down capabilities.  SigmaQuest provided the features we were looking for.  We will be able to correlate RMA data with manufacturing test data which provides us with a closed loop view of our quality systems.”

SigmaSure RMA Insight is designed for use as a stand-alone product offering, or is available as part of SigmaQuest’s SigmaSure Enterprise Suite for users that want to correlate warranty data with supplier, design, and manufacturing test data.  The application is architected for the Web and can be accessed via any Web browser as it uses the latest Internet standards (XML, SOAP, etc.).  It can also be easily deployed across multiple sites with differing computing infrastructures.  The software is available as on-demand, SigmaQuest web-hosted Software as a Service (SaaS), or as a direct license hosted by the customer. It is available to customers today as a stand-alone offering or as part of the SigmaSure product suite at a U.S. list price beginning at $4,500 per month. The SigmaSure RMA Insight license features a dashboard, analytics, Ship and RMA Wizards, issue tracking, and comes with installation, usage training, maintenance and support. 

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, controlling and analyzing quality data during the entire product lifecycle. Its solutions enable global enterprises such as OEMs that design, manufacture, and service a broad array of products ranging from wireless devices to pacemakers to fuel cells, 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.