What characteristic of today's consumer products will we see emerging as a feature in tomorrow's medical devices?
Manufacturers of consumer products have long known that they can gain a competitive advantage by creating, often superficial, perceived product differentiation through branding, design variations, advertising, and so on. Specialized equipment makers, on the other hand, often face a real need to create multiple product variations, not to manipulate perceptions, but to meet specific customer requirements.
Such is the case with World Precision Instruments (WPI), a global leader in TEER measurement, nitric oxide sensing, and other sophisticated instrumentation vital to physiological and medical research. Its customers - ranging from independent and in-house research labs, to schools and hospitals - often come to them with specific product requirements. However, creating multiple variations of such high-tech equipment can be a costly and time-consuming process, which can quickly eat up your profits.
The solution, for WPI, was to employ the Product Configurator in the SYSPRO Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) suite. The module enables them to select from multiple configuration options in a controlled, cost-effective, and user-friendly environment. They configure labor and material components "on the fly" during order entry, based on "rules based" question and answer screens. The process enables WRI to fashion custom instruments to accommodate specific research needs, while tracking the compatibility of individual system components.
The Product Configurator will not permit order takers to proceed to the next step until the current step is completed correctly, to ensure compatibility and quality. A library of common configurations enables repeat orders to be readily processed. There is also an option to convert configured selections into standard inventory part links to SYSPRO production modules.
A further benefit of SYSPRO's integrated ERP is that the Product Configurator can be imbedded into e-commerce applications, via the SYSPRO e.net solutions module, so that configured items can be ordered over the internet.
Overall, WPI finds that the SYSPRO Product Configurator helps them to speed turnaround of custom orders to meet the needs of their diversity of clients. They also experienced a decline in configuration errors, even as they reduced the involvement of experts in routine transactions. Above all, SYSPRO ERP raised their competitive efficiency, thus enhancing their bottom line.