Arkansas Steel Associates (ASA), one of the earliest adopters of Incuity technology, has recently upgraded its installation with the addition of a Windows-based SPC system. The goal was to gather specific data on how they're meeting tight customer specs for steel railroad tie plates and to enhance ISO 9000 compliance by providing formal specification reports to customers.

There was a catch, however. To turn all that data into useful information in easy-to-create reports for each customer would have required a big expense for web reporting modules and client software licenses for ASA people who needed to use the reports. Arkansas Steel solved the problem by simply adding another application to its IncuityEMI solutions.

The company called on Incuity's Professional Services group to create a new database connector that tapped the SPC application to gather data from it. They also expanded the Unified Production Model with quality variables that correlated to tags in the SPC system and specified where this data would be accessed.

The upgrade was a simple addition because ASA already had user licenses for the people who needed to monitor SPC results and report on them. Incuity's Professional Services staff set up the tag providers and created a custom Excel report (and associated trends) that includes an ISO 9000 form ID, the date, revision level and approval designation.

Shipments have now gone out to all VARs with your initial supply of IncuityEMI 2.5 DVD packages. If you haven't received yours yet, it should be there soon. In addition, packages of new product literature and customer success story brochures are being shipped this week to all VARs.

Stephanie Brown in Sales Operations will also be managing the distribution of 2.5 DVDs to end user customers this week. She has already sent an email to all VARs to let you know these shipments are starting, so that anyone who prefers to personally deliver the new IncuityEMI version to a customer can request that option.

Make your room reservations now for the Incuity VAR conference in Dana Point, California, Jan. 6-10, 2008. We've made arrangements with the headquarters hotel--the Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort & Spa--to offer discounted room rates for Incuity VARs for both the sales conference and the technical training days.

You'll get a minimum 15% discount on rooms at this lovely coastal resort, but you should make reservations as soon as possible. The conference opens on Sunday evening, Jan. 6, with a cocktail reception and informal networking get-together for Incuity staff and VAR guests. Monday and Tuesday will feature a series of excellent presentations on all aspects of the new IncuityEMI 2.5 product and our sales, marketing, tech support and professional services programs for VARs.

The remainder of the week will provide three days of technical training on the product and will be especially valuable for your development and support people. We urge all VARs to have their staffs attend these very important training sessions.

You can make your room reservations online or by phone. Simply click on the link below to make your plans online. First enter the dates for which you'd like rooms, then scroll down and click on the Group Code box and enter the code IUCIUCA. The site will pop up room availability for the Incuity block and you can complete your reservation.

With the release of IncuityEMI 2.5, it's now possible to create and use .NET CLR (Common Language Runtime) stored procedures (and other objects) to access the Incuity model. Our Professional Services group in Burlington, Ontario, has created a new Tech Note document that guides users through configuring their SQL Server 2005 system to allow CLR stored procedures.

The Incuity Marketing Department is surveying the calendar for 2008 looking for good opportunities to support our VAR community with your participation and attendance at various industry trade shows and conferences.

If you have particular vertical industry events that you'd like us to consider adding to our schedule, please let us know as soon as possible what they are, what dates they'll be held, and where they are.

We already have good input from some VARs for specific shows they'll be supporting. These include, as examples, the Petroleum Data Integration, Information and Data Management conference to be held in Houston, Texas, in April and the Chem Show Conference & Exhibition to be held in New York City at the end of October.

Incuity Software has been selected for the second year in a row as one of the Top 40 Emerging Software Vendors by Manufacturing Business Technology magazine. Incuity is featured in an article in the October issue of MBT as one of the honorees.