MKS Inc., (MKS) (TSX: MKX) the global application lifecycle management (ALM) technology leader, today announced that WABCO (NYSE: WBC), one of the world's leading suppliers to the commercial vehicle industry, has selected MKS Integrity (http://gurl.im/a627lQ) as their global engineering platform.
With MKS Integrity, WABCO can contain the complexity of embedded software development across multiple product lines to drive both increased innovation and improved competitiveness. Consolidation of development activity on a single platform enables WABCO to increase the speed of delivery, protect quality and safety standards, and seamlessly connect the value chain from OEM customers to sub-suppliers. With MKS Integrity, WABCO can continue its track record of pioneering breakthrough electronic, mechanical and mechatronic technologies for braking, stability, and transmission automation systems supplied to the world's leading commercial truck, trailer and bus manufacturers.
"Quality is critical in our industry, yet there is always pressure to reduce cycle times and we must constantly innovate to maintain our competitive edge," said Kurt Lehmann, WABCO Vice President, Product Development. "The complex interdependencies involved in modern automotive part development (http://gurl.im/a767lR) are compounded by accelerating rates of change, which demands close collaboration with our OEM customers as well as with our own suppliers."
"MKS Integrity (http://gurl.im/a627lQ) frees engineers to spend maximum time on innovation," notes Christoph Braeuchle, Customer Requirements Manager at MKS. "Process automation and enforcement helps speed up delivery without sacrificing quality or compliance with automotive process standards. The unique capability of MKS Integrity to apply change and configuration management across engineering assets is a major advantage for manufacturers of systems with embedded software (http://gurl.im/a767lR) , as they manage activities and assets across software, mechanical and electrical development with a single source of truth. It also enables more informed decisions about resource allocation and release readiness with full transparency and real-time metrics into the complete development lifecycle."
WABCO has been an MKS customer for more than 10 years, primarily using change and configuration management capabilities to manage and control source code. This new project extends usage both 'upstream' (to requirements) as well as 'downstream' (to test and release) for end-to-end management of the development lifecycle. WABCO gains better visibility and control over development while best practices like requirements-based testing are well supported. Requirements Interchange Format (RIF) capabilities within MKS Integrity will be a key factor in enabling seamless collaboration among WABCO, its OEM customers and its sub-supplier network.
"We're very excited to help WABCO transform their development lifecycle, which will in turn allow them to deliver greater value to their customers," said Michael Harris, President and CEO of MKS. "For many years we have worked to help automotive customers achieve excellence in embedded systems development with full compliance to all relevant standards. The development of automotive systems with embedded software represents both great challenges as well as great opportunities for today's suppliers and OEMs."
About MKS
MKS Inc., the global application lifecycle management (ALM) technology leader, enables software engineering and IT organizations to seamlessly manage their worldwide software development activities. With its flagship product, MKS Integrity, MKS offers support for all software development activities through a single enterprise application, resulting in better global collaboration and higher productivity. MKS supports customers worldwide with offices across North America, Europe and Asia. For more information about MKS, visit our web site at http://www.mks.com (http://www.mks.com/) .
About MKS Integrity
MKS Integrity unites the stakeholders of software development through a single source of truth for all processes, activities and assets, to manage complexity and solve the most challenging business problems. MKS Integrity provides a complete range of software product development competence, delivered in a platform that offers coherence across the application lifecycle while rapidly adapting to meet unique enterprise needs.
More information about MKS Integrity support for automotive embedded systems development is available here: http://www.mks.com/automotive (http://www.mks.com/automotive)
Copyright 5/8 2010 MKS Inc. MKS and MKS Integrity are trademarks of MKS Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this release are the property of their respective owners.
This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made. When used in this document, the words "may", "would", "could", "will", "intend", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect the Company's current views with respect to future events and are subject to such risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause our actual results to differ materially from the statements made including those factors detailed from time to time in filings made by the Company with Canadian securities regulatory authorities. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward looking statements prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as intended, planned, anticipated or expected. Although the Company believes the expectations represented by such forward looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that those expectations will prove to be correct. The Company does not intend and does not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
