| San Jose, CA
– April 20, 2004 - Agile Software
Corporation (Nasdaq: AGIL), a leading provider of
product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions,
today announced that Instron®, a leading
manufacturer of quality measurement systems, has
successfully implemented Agile Product
Collaboration and Agile Product Service and
Improvement to reduce customer response times and
track issues. Agile enables Instron to tightly
link corrective actions and engineering changes,
creating a closed loop quality process that
results in faster resolution time of customer
issues, higher customer satisfaction and lower
warranty costs. “Significant dollars were being
wasted because we couldn’t see history repeating
itself until it was too late,” said Rick
Tattersfield, vice president of quality, Instron.
“Agile’s solution enables us to view how problems
are related to specific products and tie that
directly to the product record. Agile’s open and
flexible integration platform also makes it easy
for us to tie information from Agile to any of our
other enterprise systems.”
Instron’s products are used to evaluate the
mechanical and physical properties and performance
of materials, structures and components, and are
used in research laboratories, production lines,
quality control, education, large government
installations, automotive companies and small
independent laboratories. Instron recognized a
significant opportunity to improve customer
satisfaction though quicker resolution of customer
issues. The data in Instron’s central quality
management system was not integrated with other
enterprise information, so Instron had no
efficient way of determining how customer
incidents were related to specific products or
components. As corrective actions and engineering
changes were generated to resolve customer issues,
Instron found it difficult to link the resolution
status to specific incidents and customers.
Customer service representatives were unable to
quickly respond since they had little to no
visibility into the resolution status. To further
complicate the situation, each of Instron’s sites
used their own applications to track manufacturing
issues, so corrective actions were limited to each
site, making it difficult to leverage resolutions
from one site to another.
In a August 28, 2003 AMR Research Report, Marc
McCluskey stated, “The most advanced companies
reduce product development risk by integrating
warranty data into the product development process
to serve as an early warning capability.” With the
implementation of Agile Product Service and
Improvement, Instron expects to improve
enterprise-wide visibility, with customer service
representatives being able to easily view the
status of problems and any associated corrective
actions and engineering changes. Quality analysts
and engineers will have visibility into how
problems might relate to the whole product,
resulting in faster resolution time of customer
issues and higher customer satisfaction. With
improvement to product reliability, Instron can
also expect cleaner installations and lower
warranty costs—both key metrics at Instron that
directly impact the company’s bottom line.
“ When companies are able to reduce warranty costs
and service/rework expenses, they are adding to
their bottom line. Being able to tie field data on
quality problems to the product record is key to
understanding where the problems are and how to
prevent them,” said Jay Fulcher, Agile president
and COO. “Only when quality data is analyzed
against the product record can systematic product
quality improvement take place—and customers like
Instron are seeing the importance of this. ”
About Instron
Instron® manufactures, markets and services
materials testing instruments, systems and
accessories. Instron's products are used to
evaluate the mechanical and physical properties
and performance of materials, structures and
components. Founded in 1946, Instron operates 35
offices in 17 countries, with a team of
professionals speaking more than 20 languages. For
more information on Instron, visit
www.instron.com.
About Agile Software Corporation
Agile Software Corporation (NASDAQ: AGIL) helps
companies drive profits, accelerate innovation,
reduce costs, and ensure regulatory compliance
throughout the product lifecycle. With a broad
suite of enterprise class PLM solutions,
time-to-value focused implementations, and a
unique Guaranteed Business Results program, Agile
helps companies get the most from their products.
Alcatel, Boeing, Dell Inc., Flextronics
International, Hitachi, Leapfrog, Lockheed Martin,
Magna Steyr, Siemens, QUALCOMM and ZF are among
the nearly 1200 customers in the automotive,
aerospace and defense, consumer products,
electronics, high tech, industrial products, and
life sciences industries that use Agile solutions.
For more information, call 408-284-4000 or visit
www.agile.com.
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