November 18, 2008 17:19 ET

Significant Cost Reductions Equivalent to 6% of Sales Attributable to IBS Quality Management Software

An Aberdeen Benchmark Report "The Cost of Quality, Defining the Value of Enterprise Quality Management" Finds Significant Cost Savings for Companies Using IBS's Enterprise Quality Management (EQM) Solutions

LEXINGTON, MA--(Marketwire - November 18, 2008) - IBS, a global leader in enterprise quality and compliance solutions, today announced that companies using IBS's quality management solutions demonstrate significant reductions in their cost of quality according to an Aberdeen benchmark report. This study indicates that when compared to the amount average manufacturing companies spend on quality, the cost for IBS customers is less by an amount equivalent to 6% of total revenue.

Aberdeen Group found that IBS customers were able to achieve these substantial cost reductions by driving down their overall cost of quality while maintaining better performance than average in areas such as first pass yields and complete and on time shipments.

The cost of quality takes into consideration not only the cost of bad quality due to internal and external failures, such as scrap, rework, warranty, and product recalls, among other factors, but also includes the cost of good quality that ensures the production of better quality products such as the cost of training, testing, corrective action, and audits. Through the use of IBS's quality management solutions, customers improve their ability to use quality data as actionable intelligence to drive continuous improvement across enterprise quality processes.

Other characteristics shared by IBS customers were:

--  Executive priority to improve quality across the enterprise
--  The dynamic updating of business processes as best practices emerge
--  The utilization of real time data to perform root cause analysis for
    adverse events
--  Real time visibility into supplier quality performance
--  The linking of quality metrics to operational metrics and to financial
    metrics
--  The standardization of escalation procedures for nonconformance events
    across the enterprise
    

About IBS

IBS boasts twenty-five years of experience helping thousands of customers profitably produce and deliver products and services while overcoming ever-evolving business challenges. IBS provides the integrated software technology necessary to create a "Culture of Compliance" that cuts across corporate "silos" and drives achievement of enterprise compliance goals at the lowest possible cost. IBS America, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of IBS AG, the leading provider of highly integrated software applications that enable businesses to achieve and maintain compliance with a wide range of industry standards and regulations. For additional information, visit IBS at http://www.ibs-us.com/.