Has to be the best SPC system.

We have been using WinSPC for over 10 years. The software gets better and better. Their support has historically been available during working hours only, but you can arrange after hours for upgrades or major planned events. Sales is easy to deal with. Support is very good to deal with. Their training staff are very knowledable.

Pros

End user for a major automotive parts supplier (Magna): From an end user perspective, the software is very easy to use. It is a simple interface that you can configure to meet whatever needs you have, whether manual entry via keyboard, direct entery from a Mitutoyo style gauge, or automatically fed from a plc as data is collected and presented. As an IT Administrator, this is by far the best software to maintain. They have taken the time to put functions into the softwawre that makes life much easier with upgrades, etc. And, as the Quality Engineer, if you can browse folders in windows, use a mouse and do basic functions in a computer, you can run WinSPC. Very familiar methods of managing data. The canned reports are good enough, but you can make your own easily enough

Cons

It can be costly to get going, but once you use it sufficiently you can understand the cost.

Game Changer

Because of WinSPC we are now able to have Production Team Members print our their own capability reports, plus understand them what the data is telling them. Before we had to rely on Engineers and Supervisors. I saved the best for last.........their Support Line is the bench mark for other corporations to follow. How many times do you call for Support and go through recording after recording and minutes later finally get through to an individual just to find out you have to re-tell them everything you told the recording and then its a 50-50 chance they can help. NOT with WinSPC Support, you call, you talk live to a Service Tech. These individuals are friendly and all have the capability to solve your concerns. Customer Service at its best.

Pros

Its flexible enough to fit your company's, its powerful enough to handle large or small inspections, capable of performing manual or automatic inspections just tailor it for your needs.

Cons

Ability to change sub-group size from report features.

WINSCP Review

WINSCP makes the daily workload a lot more manageable as it simplifies many tasks related to file retrieval editing, and uploads.

Pros

WINSCP allows for simple file transfer on a linux file system. I am able to easily edit multiple types of files such as .sql, .txt, .lis, and batch file types.

Cons

On occasion file uploads will contain windows characters which could affect the file's performance (i.e. ^M characters in an sql file). It would be helpful if there could be a warning of some type so that those files could be further reviewed.

It's okay, but would not recommend.

Provides housing for historical process records, allows responses for OOC instances, etc.

Pros

The customer service is great, very knowledgeable, friendly, and responsive. The plant monitor feature is nice. The charts look fine, not cheesy at all.

Cons

It's very hard to use, especially the administration side. The data entry is painful, the database connections are confusing, historical charts are difficult to view, data mining is very time consuming.

Very reliable to support continuos improvement projects

Pros

Real time process monitoring for machine operators and supervisors, very useful where process scrap becomes critical (ie: pharmaceutical industry). Easily collect deviations and allow accurate statistic analysis on massive production data. In a cost deployment project where you attack root causes through continuous improvement, a good collected measure is key.

Cons

It's a serious investment and can be someway expensive, but you'll get the advantages of a solid and customizable solution.