ETQ Announces 2022 Innovation Excellence Award Finalists

ETQ, part of Hexagon, the leading quality management system (QMS) provider, today announced the 2022 finalists for its annual ETQ Innovation Excellence Awards. The program spotlights customer ingenuity in implementing ETQ Reliance^TM in unique, creative, and unprecedented ways to address challenges in quality, health and safety and unlock significant business value to the organization.

Finalists include Corning, one of the world's leading innovators in materials science; Nutrien, the world's largest provider of crop inputs and services; and DRiV, a division of Tenneco, a leading global supplier of commercial vehicle products and services.

The finalists presented their award submissions during ETQ Quality Vision 2022, the company's annual customer conference taking place virtually April 26-29, 2022. The theme for this year's conference is "The Future in Focus," as ETQ and its customers anticipate the future of quality, which is becoming more connected, insightful, and strategic.

"It continues to impress and inspire us when we see how customers, such as Corning, Nutrien and DRiV, are optimizing Reliance in creative and innovative ways to fuel continued collaboration, enterprise-wide quality and safety, and as a result, business excellence and growth," said Robert Gremley, ETQ, CEO. "Our Innovation Awards 2022 recipients demonstrate great mastery of the vast capabilities and scalability of Reliance to bring quality and safety management to a whole new level."

Through their innovative projects outlined below, Corning, Nutrien and DRiV all demonstrated significant achievement in the award criteria, including:

• Very high relevance to ETQ's core quality and safety markets
• Measurable and meaningful return on investment (ROI)
• Demonstrated expertise in maximizing Reliance's configurability and integration capabilities

Corning: SQL statements improve user communication; support Manufacturing 4.0

Corning created a custom "Corning Support" module to manage all summary email configurations, view previously sent summary emails, quickly search for any references to a specific string across Reliance, and identify fields using the same visibility rules.

The solution supports Corning's Manufacturing 4.0 initiatives, leveraging reusable, standardized solutions to decrease time-to-implement, as well as the time spent investigating issues. The company also realized cost avoidance due to time savings of $100K per year, as well as increased transparency and accountability.

DRiV: Effective problem solving using Reliance CAPA module

DRiV's quality team needed to implement an Effective Problem-Solving (EPS) methodology globally across its facilities to conform to the industry-standard methodology followed by its OEM customers. It also wanted a single source of truth for quality issues, moving away from email and spreadsheets, and making it easier to transition when employees change positions or join the company. Putting all the data into the Reliance CAPA system gave them this single source of truth on customer complaints, major audit nonconformities, warranty issues, filed notifications and major internal issues.

The new methodology, driven by the CAPA system, helps to drive continuous improvement and sharing of data and lessons learned. DRiV now has one source of truth for decision making in a single database and helps avoid the need to have data in hundreds of different spreadsheets and emails.

Nutrien: Digital mobility for safety and housekeeping inspections

More than 1300 Nutrien retail locations require monthly on-site safety inspections, which were being completed on paper, and mailed to a third-party vendor for processing and entry into an online system. Nutrien knew it would achieve greater efficiency and reduce costs by mobilizing and digitizing inspections. Leveraging the mobile capabilities of Reliance, Nutrien enabled monthly safety and housekeeping inspections to be entered directly into the mobile system, with real-time notifications and insights.

Digitizing inspections removed the cost and time of postal carriers and third-party vendors, while also returning data ownership to Nutrien's own systems. It also gave them the analytics and reporting to identify systemic trends, enabling higher quality insights, and more informed decision making. For each recurring inspection that is digitized, Nutrien will save tens of thousands of dollars annually in postage and third-party processing fees.

About Corning

Corning is one of the world's leading innovators in materials science. For nearly 170 years, it has applied its unparalleled expertise in glass science, ceramic science, and optical physics to develop products that transform industries and enhance people's lives. Its innovations include the first glass bulbs for Thomas Edison's electric light, the first low-loss optical fiber, the cellular substrates that enables catalytic converters, and the first damage-resistant cover glass for mobile devices.

About Nutrien

Nutrien is the world's largest provider of crop inputs and services, playing a critical role in helping growers increase food production in a sustainable manner. It produces and distributes approximately 27 million tonnes of potash, nitrogen and phosphate products world-wide. With this capability and a leading agriculture retail network, it is well positioned to supply the needs of its customers.

About DRiV

A division of Tenneco, DRiV supplies innovative products and services to light and commercial vehicle customers through more than 31,000 team members across the world. The DRiV division operates in two business segments ? Motorparts, which sells and distributes a broad portfolio of products to the global vehicle aftermarket business; and Ride Performance, the original equipment (OE) business which supplies the world's leading OEMs with suspension and braking solutions.

About ETQ

ETQ, part of Hexagon, is the leading provider of quality, EHS and compliance management software, trusted by the world's strongest brands. More than 600 customers globally, spanning industries such as pharmaceuticals, electronics, heavy industry, food and beverage, and medical devices, benefit from ETQ to secure positive brand reputations, enable higher levels of customer loyalty and enhance profitability. ETQ Reliance offers built-in best practices and powerful flexibility to drive business excellence through quality. Only ETQ lets customers configure industry-proven quality processes to their unique needs and business vision. ETQ was founded in 1992 and has main offices located in the U.S. and Europe. To learn more about ETQ and its various product offerings, visit www.etq.com.

Hexagon is a global leader in sensors, software and autonomous solutions. Learn more about Hexagon (Nasdaq Stockholm: HEXA B) at hexagon.com and follow us @HexagonAB.