If you are a fan of TV shows from the 1970s, especially late night TV, then you’ll remember Carnac the Magnificent. This recurring comedic character was Johnny Carson in a Swami hat. In his sketch, Carson would delight viewers by announcing the answer to a question stored in a hermetically sealed envelope that he held up to his head. He would then tear open the envelope and read the question. The answers seemed pedestrian until Carson read the question, then you giggled like you were part of an inside joke.
In life, it would be nice to know the answer before you hear the question. It would certainly make business predictions a lot easier. I may not be Carnac the Magnificent, but I can make a few predictions about IQMS customers, my department and the EnterpriseIQ manufacturing ERP and MES product for 2014 and I feel confident they will come true because I have a hand in the control of their outcome.
Prediction No 1: Customers will gleefully embrace IQMS’ new procedures for version control/naming conventions, fulfilling Software Enhancement Requests (SERs) and addressing functional anomalies. In exchange, customers will have access to a more streamlined application of software updates and Known Issues.
Prediction No. 2: Not only will the IQMS Quality Assurance department grow by another 30 percent, but our TestComplete projects will increase by at least 200 percent. TestComplete is software developed by SmartBear. With TestComplete, the Quality Assurance team generates a test scenario, the scenarios become part of a larger project and these projects run every night. If the tests fail, then we know we have an area of the software that needs attention. All Quality Assurance Specialists build their own scenarios and starting in 2014, we now have a dedicated employee whose sole purpose is to build scenarios (including incorporation of our customers’ validation scenarios in the test projects).
Prediction No. 3: The IQMS customizable user interface, Smart Page, will be utilized by our customers as the multi-purpose tool it was developed to be, bringing together business and manufacturing intelligence tools into a customized dashboard. The Programming and Quality Assurance departments focused a lot of time in improving this tool in 2013 and I predict a huge increase in its use and continuous improvement in 2014.
I may not be as funny as Carnac the Magnificent, but in 2014, I am looking forward to being as accurate as he was with my predictions.
