ION

Avantages

The traceability, work instruction, and issue ticket modules work together well and provide the needed functionality. The Ion team is highly responsive and actively adding features. They provide real time support on both bugs and usability concerns. The technician facing interface is highly functional. Setting up and scaling the software instance is easy. The First Resonance team makes export control compliance easy.

Inconvénients

The GUI can be very clunky on older modules. Minor program errors are not uncommon while working in the tool. Data entry from our PDM system is very manual and time consuming.
The lack of strong mobile support is a significant opportunity for the software, but a frustrating omission at the moment.

Avantages

Easy to deploy and get acquainted with. Integrates well with our developing company process. Feature implementation, changes and fixes are extremely fast.

Inconvénients

Some functions are not super intuitive, but are still maturing. Not a major con but a function of a developing software platform.

Avantages

Very clean look. First Resonance has also been extremely receptive to feedback, even for new features that can take a while to implement.

It's clear that this software is in it's early stages, but getting feedback and responding to it is a great wat to improve.

Inconvénients

There are soooo many improvements need to make this software productions ready.

The instruction editor is still pretty annoying to use when incorporating images, ordered list, and any non-basic formatting needs.

I wish there was an option to create a field that can take multiple inputs.

I have never tried to used the part tracking and traceability in ION, but from what I have seen it does not look ready to go.

I wish the devs did more controlled roll outs of improvements/changes. Sometimes, I feel that things are rolled out really quickly and result in a lot of glitches upon implementation.

Avantages

The interface is simple and the software is generally pretty easy to navigate. Creating items and procedures is smooth and I can generate work orders with no problem. The First Resonance team is responsive and updates are dropped frequently, so issues that I might have one week may get resolved the next. Always nice to wake up to new functionalities and have an evolving UI.

Inconvénients

The filtering is not great. Creating items or work orders is easy enough, but going back and finding work that was done previously is not an easy task. At the moment, this generally consists of scrolling through long lists. The search bar also is a little inflexible and queries have to be precisely defined, otherwise, it's back to scrolling through a long, long list. It's also not apparent what's going on in the backend of Ion and it's easy to mess up links among different items that are linked (i.e. it is pretty fragile).

Avantages

ION is super easy to set up! You can get running with it within a few days and immediately make an impact on your production workflow. Having your work instructions directly in the software and not in some other system is a huge benefit. The ability to track the as-built BOM and collect data during the execution of runs is extremely valuable.

Inconvénients

There are some edge cases and bugs that still need to be sorted out. There are some features that are lacking like in app reports, but there are good workarounds until they get a chance to implement it.
Consumption of material for 3D printing applications needs to be improved.

Avantages

Ion is going to revolutionize the field of work instructions and inventory management. The support team is knowledgeable, helpful, and easy to work with. While working with the team, it feels like they're part of your internal team when finding solutions within Ion.

Inconvénients

The price seems to be a little aggressive for the software when compared with alternatives. The per user price keeps the software from being fully adopted by the company to find solutions of their own.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à ION

Avantages

Ion has great features for developing work instructions fast. It is very easy and intuitive to use. I like the data field collection option that Ion gives you which helps better track the data inputs that need to be captured when executing processes. I also think the nested step functionality is great and helps organize the work instruction a lot better in addition to the dependencies functionality.

Inconvénients

I feel that some of the data field validations are not fully developed. Min/Max values can be mistakenly entered and in result the operators using the work instruction may not be able to capture process data correctly. There are often bugs when new tools are released and although these are usually corrected pretty quickly it slows down the operators when performing work. Editing functionality when creating work instructions could use a lot of improvement.

Avantages

I really appreciate the attention to detail the First Resonance Team devotes to customizing our Ion interface. The clean interface, seamless procedure integration, and run/issue capabilities are only a few if the features that make my team work fast and efficiently. It did not take much time for the team to integrate Ion into our day-to-day start-up life, and more importantly, grows with us as we scale-up production.

Inconvénients

My current struggle with the software is something I know the First Resonance team is working on already - the import parts feature. If we could possibly have a verification tab or import history implemented to the software, it could possibly help minimize the confusion relating to whether or not a item line was imported correctly. I will relay an addition to this customer request to the Ion support.

Avantages

I love that this is a simple, cloud-based solution for manufacturing execution, that DOESN'T have too much bloat!

Inconvénients

A lot of the core functionality is there, but I'm wishing for some usability features like better organization and filtering of runs, better tracking for different workcenters, and some "quirk-reduction" as there are a lot of little things you just need to know how to do or how to massage the system.

Avantages

I like how easy it is to create new runs and procedures, as well as the usefulness of the runs. I also appreciate the how receptive to feedback the team is and how quickly they implement changes to make the software better.

Inconvénients

My biggest complaint is that there is no way to view the history of a part. We often make an assembly, use it, then strip it down to use the parts elsewhere. When we try to go back to see where that part had been used in the past, there's no way to find out.

Avantages

Ion is a unique tool that solves a lot of problems that have been bothering me my whole career, writing procedures, releasing them, revision control, and tracking data related to the as-built product. I love that First Resonance is highly responsive to user requests and help, and has the vision to help companies just like ours make manufacturing process control easy.

Inconvénients

I wish FR did a bit more testing on new features before pushing them to beta groups. I may as well have access to FR's Jira if we are going to be writing bug descriptions that often.

A good mobile experience will dramatically increase the effectiveness of the software, as well as more/improved hooks to import BOMs from a design.

Avantages

I love that First Resonance takes our feedback and continuously updates their software to match our needs. it is also intuitive for the most part which is a bonus.

Inconvénients

The software can be quite buggy sometimes which is understable as it is still indevelopment. Would be great if the changes suggested get implemented into the datagrid structure soon. The datagrid will quite likely be the most used feature across the company and it needs to be solid.

Avantages

Home UI is easy to understand. Easy place to keep track of completed and in-progress work.

Inconvénients

Lack of ability to link different runs which could help move from one run to another without the use of going back to the run table.

Avantages

Extremely intuitive software that's helps our company keep track and manage workflows

Inconvénients

Ion has a hard time rendering images and would benefit from an API that could allow users to automate specific tasks.

Avantages

Simple, easy to use. The options for QA checks are very feature rich and very useful.

Inconvénients

Some strange UI things, but nothing serious. They will be worked out in time.

Avantages

This product is very easy to use. I believe when we roll this out to more of our team, it will be straightforward. Questions to the ION team are also answered promptly and all requests seem possibly to enact.

Inconvénients

As a newer user, there is not too much I have found to be unlikable at this time. The only thing that poses a challenge is the need to refresh a purchase order after placing it, instead of it updating real time as I edit.

Avantages

Procedures and Runs. I like how we are able to have a common location and format for these things.

Inconvénients

Parts creation and list. It's clunky and I would rather we have unique pn.

Avantages

The software simplifies, and improves the quality of our procedures with simple click-based movement through the procedure when your hands are busy

Inconvénients

There are still some minor bugs that could be worked out that are expected with a new software.

Avantages

Organization. No annoying people bothering me

Inconvénients

Complexity of the product. Annoying reviews.

Avantages

Very responsive customer service. Intuitive software, and easy to implement into our workflow.

Inconvénients

Since the software is still being developed, there are a lot of areas of improvement, so capabilities can be a little lacking at first. The team at First Resonance however is very receptive to recommendations, and implementations occur quickly.

Avantages

easy to begin using and customizing. The development team is responsive and value and use your suggestions for bettering the program.

Inconvénients

As it is still in development, some features do not exist and others are not fully fleshed out yet.

Avantages

Easy to start and create procedures. Basic traceability process in place.

Inconvénients

search function. Trace non-confirming materials.

Avantages

Great UI, intuitive design, responsive team consistently rolling out new features, first in class integration platform.

Inconvénients

Some robust features found in similar enterprise systems are not yet available.

Avantages

This is my fist time working with work-instructions software and I found it very easy to learn and to integrate with our developing manufacturing processes.

Inconvénients

Incorporating this software with all of our other software was challenging but the Ion team is very helpful and responsive.

Avantages

The software is the highly useful for config tracking, mfg documentation and build tracking. It is the bridge between manual tracking and an expensive PLM system.

Inconvénients

The product was not the issue, it was the timing that was not right.