BMW Manufacturing Selects AIMS' PQMS for Expanded Body Shop

(Durham, North Carolina, August 31, 2001) - Advanced Integrated Manufacturing Solutions, Co. (AIMS) today announced selection of its Process and Quality Management System (PQMS) 2.0 by BMW Manufacturing Corp. in South Carolina. PQMS 2.0 will be used for the expanded Body Shop. The new version of PQMS significantly extends the capabilities of PQMS 1.0, which provided BMW MC's Body Shop with a high degree of automated quality tracking capabilities for their X5 Sport Activity Vehicle, recognized by the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety as the world's safest in it's class.

The new PQMS 2.0 provides Process and Quality Planners with seamless integration between the all-digital designs of BMW vehicles and the execution of those plans on the shop floor. New drill-down features provide unparalleled ease of operation for Quality Inspectors and Rework staff, who reduced their average time-per-car by a factor of ten with the first version of PQMS.

Sophisticated sampling inspection and buffer management functions, present in the first version and enhanced in PQMS 2.0, enable significant reductions in operational overhead while ensuring the highest level of quality. Integration with the highly automated Body Shop material-handling system prevents any vehicle with any unresolved anomalies from shipping to the Paint Shop, preventing expensive rework and dramatically improving throughput at a bottleneck decision point. Extensive reporting and real time Web-based status display completes the feature set.

AIMS plans to continue enhancing the PQMS product, providing supplier integration capabilities and Web-enabled quality and process analysis through integration with their WEB/STAR solution suite. "PQMS is an integral part of our overall strategy to bring sophisticated quality management functions to the shop floor and engineering offices using proven technology at a competitive price," said Perry Smith, AIMS President.

AIMS develops a variety of integrated information and control software solutions to advance quality, productivity, and efficiency for their manufacturing customers. Their products include the WEB/STAR solution suite, providing Web-enabled Quality Management, Maintenance Management, Integrated External and Internal Supply Chain Management, and Manufacturing Intelligence solutions.