Newsletter:
NWA SPC Update: October 2009
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Industry News
Upcoming Product and SPC Training
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NWA SPC Update is a newsletter from Northwest Analytical (NWA), the world's leading provider of statistical process control software. Here you will find the latest SPC news and solutions for manufacturers and laboratories.
Industry News
Fortitech
Founded in 1986, Fortitech, Inc. is the world leader in the development of custom nutrient premixes for the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries, integrating functional ingredients from a comprehensive selection of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, nucleotides and nutraceuticals. Fortitech chose NWA Quality Analyst as its global standard SPC charting, analysis and documentation tool. The company serves customers in the global food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries that must in turn satisfy their customers and government regulators.
Rockwood Pigments
Rockwood Pigments is a primary manufacturer and processor of liquid, powder and granulated forms of iron oxide color pigments, natural and synthetic inorganic pigments and automated pigment handling systems used by manufacturers of coatings, colorants, concrete products, plastics, rubber, paper, vinyl, cosmetics, pet food, ink, toner, and other industrial uses.
Rockwood Pigments decided to make a significant investment to its IT infrastructure to improve process management for the Taicang and Shenzhen plants in China. A central application in this upgrade is the NWA Quality Information System.
The NWA Quality Information System needed to be a solution to meet the escalating needs of process and quality data management complexity. The flexible architecture of the NWA Quality Information System fit within the plant-corporate environment.
Widmer Brothers Brewing
Brothers Kurt and Rob Widmer founded Widmer Brothers Brewing Company in 1984. After merging with Redhook of Woodinville, WA in 2008, the resulting Craft Brewers Alliance has became the seventh largest brewer in the United States.
As a major player in the craft brewing industry, Widmer looked at how to push their brewing process performance to the next level. Widmer decided to add NWA Quality Information System to their process management resources. Their ongoing goal is to “identify areas where we can reduce variability, set targets and understand the capability of the process. We want to look into our process with deeper understanding.”
Three Valleys Water
The delivery of water to consumers is heavily regulated, and safety is all-important. Instances of breaches or accidents leading to poor quality or, worse, contamination of supply become high profile media stories and dent consumer confidence in a product that is the most basic of commodities. At Three Valleys Water, the quality of water is monitored through a variety of tests using NWA Quality Analyst for quality control.
Part of Veolia Environment and supplying more than 800 million liters of water a day, Three Valleys Water is the largest water-only supplier in the United Kingdom. Working 365 days a year, Veolia Water (UK) Laboratory carries out more than a million tests and Quality Control Manager, Kal Sidhu, relies heavily on his Quality Analyst software.
New NWA Business Partners: QIC and Envisage
NWA continues to expand our network of partners to provide sales and support services around the world. We have recently announced agreements with Quality Integrators Corporation, Newmarket, Ontario and Envisage Technology, Shenzhen, China. At this point, the world’s major manufacturing centers are no more than two time zones from NWA sales and support services.
QIC
Quality Integrators Corporation (QIC) is based in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada, and has over 20 years of systems integration experience in industries such as food processing for which NWA systems meet process management needs ranging from data collection to real-time reporting. QIC (www.qic-intl.com) is a leading provider of Manufacturing Execution Systems and Real-time Performance Management (RPM) solutions to Fortune 1000 manufacturers. They help their clients achieve continuous improvement in operating efficiencies and provide a flow of critical data between the shop floor and the top floor to ensure that the right information is in the right place at the right time.
Envisage
Envisage Technology Ltd (www.envisage.hk/gyen.html) is located in Shenzhen, China, and has expertise in the areas of product molding, assembly and packaging. The Envisage team is dedicated to provide optimized products, service and solution platforms to their multinational clients. Envisage will be working with the NWA China offices in Shanghai.
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Upcoming Product and SPC Training
Applied SPC with NWA Quality Analyst
November 10-11, 2009
Chicago, IL
Participants gain expertise using NWA Quality Analyst while applying statistical quality control techniques in classroom exercises. The class then works in teams to solve problems in a simulated manufacturing process. Attendees learn how to maximize their use of NWA Quality Analyst while brushing up on SPC.
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Events and Publications
ADEPT Scientific, UK - Quality Day
NWA is joining our UK distributor ADEPT Scientific for a public seminar, Quality Day on October 8, 2009 which will be at Letchworth Hall in Letchworth. The topic is “Quality in Practice - No Matter What the Economic Climate.” You will hear real-life case studies and presentations that demonstrate how Quality Systems can help companies survive the recession and thrive in the economic upturn.
Intercol, UAE
NWA staff joined our UAE distributor Intercol to visit customer sites such as Moalajah and made joint presentations at several projects in process.
Moalajah, Ajman, UAE: Moalajah has implemented NWA products to replace the paper based data collection system for plants and labs. Using NWA software, they have achieved automation in data collection and reporting. Quality Monitor helps them detect on-line specifications violations during the process of data-entry. Control charts are being used to effectively monitor process variation.
Moalajah is a wastewater services company formed by the Government of Ajman. Moalajah is a classic case of Public-Private Partnership in the Mid-East as it is jointly owned by the Government of Ajman, Veolia Water UK and Besix, Belgium. The Moalajah contract covers construction of the wastewater treatment plant with a maximum capacity of 90,000 cubic meters per day, installation of the 230-km collection system and service lines to homes and wastewater billing.
Note, Veolia Water UK also runs the Three Valleys Water facility.
Other recent projects by Intercol include:
Borouge
Abu Dhabi, UAE, www.borouge.com
Borouge uses NWA Quality Analyst integrated with their Thermo Sample Manager LIMS. They upgraded their staff to the latest version of Quality Analyst and Intercol worked with them to deliver two-day onsite training. During this training, Borouge was also introduced to the latest features including Run Files which have automated their charting needs and helped them reduce reporting time considerably.
About Borouge:
Established in 1998 as a joint venture between the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), one of the world’s major oil companies, and Borealis, a leading European plastics provider, the facility produces innovative plastics solutions in end-use plastics application throughout the Middle East, Asia-Pacific and Africa. Borouge provides a range of differentiated products for high-value infrastructure applications, including water, gas and industrial pipe systems, power and communication cables, advanced packaging and automotive components. Borouge’s state-of-the-art petrochemical complex is located at Ruwais, Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.
Arabian Pipes Company
Al-Jubail, Saudi Arabia, www.arabian-pipes.com
The project involved implementation of NWA Quality Analyst and Quality Monitor in four plants. Their main interest in implementing SPC was to control pipe coating quality and reduce wastage by controlling coating thickness. The data collection is automated with the help of Quality Monitor interfaces to surface coating and thickness analyzer devices. The system has reduced operator time and improved data collection accuracy. The project was successfully implemented in April 2009.
About Arabian Pipes Co:
Arabian Pipes Co. (APC) is the largest manufacturer of medium range High Frequency Welded (HFW) steel pipes in the Middle East. The facility is located in the Riyadh Second Industrial City and specializes in the manufacture and anti-corrosion coating of HFW pipe for Oil & Gas, Petrochemical, Agricultural & Construction Industries. APC is unique as the only HFW Mill in the Middle East with a state of the art anti-corrosion coating plant for external FBE, 3LPE and 3LPP.
ISO 22000 Compliant Food Safety Systems - NWA/Pilgrim Software Webinar
ISO 22000 Compliant Food Safety Systems examines the ISO 22000 standard and the role of standard commercial software in implementing a compliant food-safety-management system (FSMS). ISO 22000 is a linked standard and the FSMS is the enabling system architecture. The standard describes a FSMS that is not simply a records archive, but rather an active process-management tool.
The webinar describes the strategy of creating and maintaining a system to manage the operational aspects of prerequisite and HACCP programs, ingredient and product genealogy, and quality management with the necessary alerts and analytics to support truly intelligent process management and improvement. The session also discusses how the FSMS links with other corporate functions such as supply chain management.
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Current NWA Product Release Numbers
Users frequently ask us for the most current software release numbers so we publish them on our website.
© Northwest Analytical, Inc., all rights reserved. NWA Quality Monitor, NWA Quality Monitor Supervisor, NWA Quality Analyst, NWA Quality Analyst Web Server, NWA QAx, and NWA SPCx are trademarks or registered trademarks of Northwest Analytical. *All other company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of those respective companies.
Northwest Analytical (NWA) is the leading provider of SPC software with more than 50,000 licenses shipped to over 5,000 companies. NWA software is recognized for its ease-of-use and ability to integrate with other software and systems. The NWA SPC software suite includes plant floor data collection and supervision, enterprise-wide charting and analysis, web-based reporting and embedded SPC.
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