Sequent American Operations Receives ISO 9000 Certification; Sequent Customer Service Gets "Triple-Benefit" from ISO 9000.

BEAVERTON, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 10, 1996--Sequent Computer Systems today announced that its North American Operations, including Worldwide Support and Technology, Worldwide Logistics and Operations, has received ISO 9000 certification.

According to officials at Sequent, the ISO 9000 process has yielded a triple benefit for Sequent, including significantly reduced inventory cost, improved cycle times and, most importantly, vastly improved service for Sequent's customers.

Steven Aleshire, director of Sequent's American customer service operations, called the ISO 9000 implementation process "the driving force that propelled improvements to 68 customer service processes, introduced powerful self-directed work teams and that has given our company a stronger competitive position."

ISO 9000 is a quality systems standard recognized worldwide as a measure of an organization's ability to efficiently and consistently execute its key operational processes. Certification signifies an organization's compliance with the rigorous elements of the standard as measured by licensed independent auditing agencies such as TUV, Sequent's ISO 9000 registrar.

Excellence in customer service is a requirement in Sequent's on-line transaction processing, decision support and internet/web based market segments, putting around-the-clock pressure on service organizations to perform to new levels.

"Customer confidence in our support is a key part of the buying decision," said Aleshire. "Our customer response time has been improved by a full 50 percent, we've had an 89 percent gain in immediate referral to specialists, and our problem resolution time has seen a 25 percent improvement. These all resulted from workflow improvements that came out of our process mapping during ISO implementation."

Jeff Feinstein, vice president and general manager of Sequent's American sales operations, said Sequent's competitive position has indeed been enhanced by improved services. "The substantial cycle-time improvements made in key customer service processes have helped Sequent win new business and grow some older accounts to a greater extent than would have been possible before."

ISO 9000 has also spurred some big wins in the logistics area for Sequent by reducing their approved vendor list and refining materials handling procedures.

"In the process of documenting our procedures for ISO, we identified needed improvements in our materials handling and logistics spaces," said Aleshire. "Once our people could see the problems in the workflow, they responded very rapidly. Today our very high success rate in getting the right part to the customer site within a few hours reflects an industry-leading logistics model."

Another benefit Sequent has realized is positive cultural change stemming from self-directed work teams. Instituted as part of the ISO effort to document and map processes, these empowered teams are responsible for the improvements made during the ISO certification process and for on-going continuous improvements at Sequent, Aleshire said.

Bob Brooks, vice president of Worldwide Customer Services for Sequent, views this certification as a "continuation of efforts to enhance our capabilities and systems, which will ensure Customer Services provides consistent, predictable, global support for our customers' enterprise. This certification is the next step to worldwide certification for all Sequent geographies. Our European Operations has been certified for some time, and Asia Pacific is following the same processes and quality standards for its future certification."

Sequent Computer Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: SQNT), is a leading architect and provider of open client/server solutions for enterprise business computing. With an installed base of nearly 8,000 systems, Sequent leads all other vendors of high end UNIX systems supporting very large-scale on-line transaction processing (OLTP), decision support (DSS) and internet-based applications. Sequent's project-oriented offerings include consulting, educational and professional services geared to help organizations re-architect their existing information technology infrastructures.

Sequent's World Wide Web address is http://www.sequent.com. This news release and other information is available from Sequent's news-on-demand fax service at 800/356-0834. -0-

Sequent, Symmetry and DYNIX/ptx are registered trademarks and NUMA-Q and IQ-Link are trademarks of Sequent Computer Systems Inc. All other trademarks, brand and product names are the property of their respective holders.

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