MOUNTAIN VIEW, California - May 3, 2004 -- Attensity, an emerging leader in data analysis software, today announced the resounding success of the April 21, 2004 conference on "Lean Quality: The Coming Revolution in Reducing Warranty Expense." The conference, which sold out days in advance and was co-hosted by ASQ Automotive Division and Carnegie Mellon University, drew attendees from many of the largest automotive manufacturers in North America.

The focus of the one-day event was to introduce attendees to Lean Quality, a new methodology that calls for automotive manufacturers to begin using text information for the description, discovery and measurement of quality problems in order to drive quality improvement, reduce warranty expenses and boost customer satisfaction. The conference included presentations from AMR Research, Shumar Lean Quality Consulting, the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG), ASQ Automotive Division, Carnegie Mellon, Diagnostic Strategies and the Original Equipment Suppliers Association (OESA).

"Lean Quality has already been well received by quality experts and industry analysts, but the true test was how a broad audience of automotive manufacturers would respond to the idea," said Craig Norris, CEO of Attensity. "As this event clearly proved, Lean Quality is quickly gaining traction across all levels of the automotive industry, including the manufacturers. We look forward to building on this momentum, and helping automotive companies use Lean Quality as a means to start leveraging their text-based data in order to drive quality improvement."

Ron Mundt, Director of Service Support Operations at Harley-Davidson Motor Company, attended the conference and noted, "I was impressed not only by the high caliber of the speakers at this event, but by the subject matter itself. I believe we were the only motorcycle company represented at this conference. However, like many of the automotive-related companies, one of our top priorities is to ensure complete customer satisfaction by delivering high quality products. As part of this, it is critical that we find and resolve any quality issues as quickly as possible. The Lean Quality approach is extremely compelling since it could expedite this critical process, while still reducing costs."

Similar to Lean Manufacturing, Lean Quality urges automotive manufacturers to move from batch analysis to a problem flow approach, eliminating bottlenecks and ensuring that quality issues can be quickly and properly identified, prioritized and routed to the appropriate point of responsibility. As part of this methodology, Lean Quality calls for the systematic capture and analysis of text-based information describing quality problems along with conventional coded data - allowing manufacturers to adopt a problem description orientation rather than the traditional problem code orientation to describe failures that result in warranty claims.

By augmenting codes with rich, text-based information sources, manufacturers can spot problem trends earlier, gain better insight into existing problems and route problems more efficiently to constituents well positioned to take action. This approach builds upon existing business processes that have been utilized in the automotive industry, rather than replacing them.

"Our organization is focused on helping the automotive industry find new ways to drive quality improvement," said Lou Ann Lathrop, chair of ASQ Automotive Division. "The topics discussed at the all-day seminar 'Lean Quality: The Coming Revolution in Reducing Warranty Expense' were definitely high on the minds of many automotive industry leaders and engineers. The conference attendees certainly agreed with our assessment - 90 percent of those surveyed after the event said they were interested in future seminars on this topic. People were very interested in learning more about solutions and how others made improvements."

Attensity is committed to helping commercial enterprises, such as automotive companies and durable goods manufacturers, address quality issues. The company's patented software automatically extracts factual data from text-based sources such as warranty claims, customer surveys and service records, and then combines it with other business-critical data to deliver enhanced visibility across the entire quality, reliability and durability (QRD) process.

With Attensity's solutions, organizations can quickly leverage information from all facets of the QRD process to detect problems, identify root causes and empower product organizations with the information they need to improve quality and reduce warranty expense. Instead of waiting for months to accumulate and manually process information, organizations have the granular and accurate data necessary to find and fix problems earlier in the cycle, and in some cases, even before they arise.

About Attensity
Attensity Corporation is an emerging leader in advanced data analysis software for commercial enterprises and government agencies. Attensity's solutions are the first to join structured and unstructured data, enabling organizations to perform analytics that speed response to critical events and issues that, until now, have been difficult to detect and resolve. For more information, please visit www.attensity.com.