InfinityQS
Leading the Quest for Supply Chain Visibility

Twenty-five years ago, Michael Lyle sat at a makeshift desk assembled from a piece of plywood balanced on two file cabinets in a mobile home that doubled as an office. There, he and his business partner, Christopher Kearsley (now InfinityQS’ EVP research &development), would fervently write code, and pass floppy disks back and forth for testing. The goal? Create software that could automate the analysis of quality data through industrial statistics and Statistical Process Control (SPC) methodology. From these humble beginnings arose InfinityQS International, Inc.

Behind President and CEO Lyle’s leadership and a quarter century of working side-by-side with the manufacturing industry’s foremost experts, InfinityQS has become a beacon for enterprise quality in the supply chain industry. Headquartered near Washington, D.C., with offices in Seattle, London, Beijing and Shanghai, the company now services more than 40,000 active licenses with over 2,500 of the world’s top manufacturers including Kraft Foods, Ball Corporation, Boston Scientific, Graham Packaging and Medtronic. In addition to general manufacturing operations, the company’s expertise spans the aerospace & defense, automotive, food & beverage, life sciences and packaging industries.

InfinityQS’ enterprise quality hub, ProFicient, is enabling global manufacturers to turn data into actionable Manufacturing Intelligence to not only improve product quality, but also decrease costs, maintain compliance and make smarter business decisions across the supply chain. Powered by a centralized SPC analytical engine, ProFicient is proving to be the missing piece of the quality “puzzle.”

“Today’s supply chains face the challenge of managing disparate technology systems that silo prolific amounts of data,” Lyle said. “Our ProFicient quality hub eliminates these inconsistencies by bringing together various data sources to create unified visibility. We are now seeing manufacturers truly taking control of quality and gaining a greater understanding of the meaning behind the data they collect.”

A rapidly growing Fortune 500 company and manufacturer of wire and cable products used ProFicient to improve visibility and decrease process variations from plant to plant and supplier to supplier. As a result, this company experienced significant savings in raw material usage on three production lines over the course of a year, while ensuring product quality across the enterprise and throughout the supply chain.

Notably, ProFicient’s cloud-based deployment option, ProFicient on Demand, further extends the platform’s capabilities by streamlining global data collection and analysis. With cross-browser functionality and mobile device compatibility, ProFicient on Demand is not dependent on individual systems nor IT configurations, allowing increased ease of access for any facility around the world via its centralized data repository. For example, a U.S. manufacturer of hybrid step motors discovered the power of cloud-based SPC in monitoring supplier quality in real time. With ProFicient on Demand, this InfinityQS client reduced defects and improved overall product quality to better-meet customer requirements.

“Cloud computing is becoming more prominent in the manufacturing industry,” Lyle said. “It allows for collaboration beyond the manufacturer’s own organization, and brings data from suppliers’ operations into the quality hub for an even greater level of visibility. Therefore, manufacturers can monitor their suppliers’ processes in real-time to identify issues before components are ever shipped or incorporated into a final product.”

InfinityQS Leading the Quest for Supply Chain Visibility Our ProFicient quality hub eliminates the inconsistencies of managing disparate technology systems by bringing together various data sources to create unified visibility

Looking forward, the future is bright for InfinityQS as manufacturers search for better, easier-to-use and more effective solutions to help streamline operations and ensure product quality and consistency. With unrelenting innovation and foresight, Lyle and his team will continue to sit at the forefront of enterprise quality in the supply chain – a much more comfortable place than a plywood desk in a mobile home.