The conveyor belts halted to a stop, and the ‘whir and buzz’ at the plant floor of a local confectionery receded into an abrupt silence. Upon observation, the maintenance department declared that the breakdown was caused by a single malfunctioning machine. The shop floor manager was later confronted with the fact that they could have easily nipped the plain-sailing issue in its bud, had it been monitored and fixed days before, but the lack of a systematic shop floor management mechanism had drawn into this complex predicament.

Every executive who manages a plant floor can relate to having run into a similar roadblock, at some point of the manufacturing cycle, throwing production in the doldrums and inviting business risks. Since its inception in the year 1989, IQMS has been helping manufacturers streamline internal processes, by providing the much-needed transparency into the entire production lifecycle. Leading the organization from its front lines is Gary Nemmers, CEO and President, IQMS, with his adeptness in taking companies to the next level of operational excellence.

IQMS’ indigenous application, RealTime addresses the manufacturing, monitoring, and data collection needs of an enterprise’s factory unit. Eponymous to its name, RealTime is calibrated to record and convey production information with minimalistic time delay, as and when the parts are being manufactured to fulfill order lists.

The software then automatically updates the data repository with schedule details, downtime, finished product counts, scrap, rejects, and quality data. It also includes modules for mistake proofing the scheduled setup of production jobs, verifying product specifications, regulator approved materials, packaging, and label formats prior to initiating the process chain. Additionally, RealTime increases the overall productivity and efficiency of the manufacturing process and at the same time performs quality checks on the end product.

IQMS’ prominent and rich customer base also includes several names that are ruling the roost in the automotive, medical, aerospace, defense, food and beverage, and metal industries. Taking pride in serving their customers, Nemmers extols, “The customers we have at IQMS are part of that backbone of America that employ people and provide career opportunities for people and make wonderful products.” From plastic bottle caps to medical devices and automotive parts, IQMS has a crucial role to play in an average consumer’s daily life. Maintaining a ‘continual and collaborative dialogue and development environment’ with its customer base, the company has a customer discussion forum, the MyIQMS community, from where they constantly take note of customer feedbacks for product development. The company has a solid footprint across North America, Mexico, Europe and Asia, constantly scouting for prospective partnerships to keep manufacturing processes lean, competitive, and profitable.

As a means of aligning its goals and objectives with that of the rapid tempo of technology—more particularly, Industry 4.0—ongoing developments inside IQMS’ innovation labs advocate the prolific adoption of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), big data, and analytics. Tools like RealTime and IQMS’s EnterpriseIQ (ERP software) are already knee-deep in deriving insightful information from vast proportions of industrial data for proactive monitoring. The evolution of IQMS’s manufacturing and more specifically, shop floor solutions is dotted with increasingly momentous milestones, from wireless and mobile capabilities to collaboration and communication. That said, the logical course of direction for IQMS is bound for better shop floors and ultimately, better standards of manufacturing.