Welcome to Quality Digest's 1998 Statistical Process Control Software Buyers Guide. In this guide, you'll find a wide range of software dealing with SPC, problem solving, statistical analysis, design of experiments, gage R&R and related products.

The matrix, which you can download by clicking here, contains an alphabetical listing of more than 100 software companies or distributors and nearly 275 software products. Product attributes are listed across from the products under broad categories for statistical quality control, statistical analysis, design of experiments and statistical process control, with each of these categories subdivided into specific product functions.

The Gage R&R heading includes gage management and control products. An "x" marked under this heading means that a particular product performs one or more of those functions.

This year, we received a few letters regarding the format of the guide, which has stayed the same during the past several years. Although the software manufacturers lauded us for the depth of the buyers guide, they did point out three topics that we do not cover well and which we will try to address next year.

First, Year 2000 and standardization issues require that networked software be compatible across a variety of Y2K-compliant databases, such as Oracle, SQL, SyBase, Paradox, etc. This is a priority requirement for many information systems and information technology departments, and much new software works with one or more of those databases, notes David Veach of DataNet Quality Systems.

Second, more and more software now dynamically interacts with other software applications and with gages via OLE automation, DDE, OPC, COM/DCOM or ActiveX, adds Veach. Future buyers guides will take these two observations into account. For now, we have noted, where possible and when the information was supplied, the software's capabilities in those two areas.

Last, largely driven by QS-9000 and to some extent ISO 9000, gage R&R has become "big stuff," writes Dave Crosby of The Crosby Co. To that end, we will endeavor to enlarge on that section of the buyers guide or provide a separate buyers guide devoted expressly to gage software.

Tell us what you think by e-mailing spcguide@qualitydigest.com .

To maintain the quality of the SPC buyers guide, we listed only those companies that responded to our questionnaire. We also excluded software packages that obviously didn't fit within the scope of this guide. (We publish a buyers guide each month, so other types of software will appear in other guides.) Some products are listed more than once because a product may appear under both its producer's and its distributors' names.

As with all Quality Digest buyers guides, the 1998 SPC Software Buyers Guide is intended to provide our readers with an impartial listing of software titles. The software listed in this directory has been neither evaluated nor endorsed by Quality Digest.

This guide requires Adobe Acrobat, which you can download by clicking on the following icon.