EFACS provides perfect fit for Innovative Healthcare Manufacturer Finsbury

Customer Profile

Formed in 1978 Finsbury Orthopaedics specialise in the design, development, manufacture and supply of advanced joint replacement products. The Challenge The diverse and complex nature of products, sizes and specifications makes Finsbury’s manufacturing process a formidable task.

The Solution

Finsbury realised that it required an integrated, state of the art ERP solution to assist its ongoing growth. It found the perfect fit with EFACS E/8.

The Benefits

Finsbury’s Business Improvement Manager sees real benefits from EFACS’ ability to present live, accurate and relevant data across the system, and regards EFACS as an essential constituent of Finsbury’s future business plans.

EFACS provides perfect fit for Innovative Healthcare Manufacturer

Formed in 1978 as a spin-off company from Imperial College London’s Biomechanics Unit, Finsbury Orthopaedics specialise in the design, development, manufacture and supply of advanced joint replacement products. Advanced manufacturing techniques and innovative design and insight into clinical requirements has boosted Finsbury into an international organisation with over 200 employees and a turnover of £21 million in 2006.

In addition to Finsbury’s OEM business it sells its own products directly in the UK, Germany and Australia. Finsbury’s direct export business is done through its overseas distributors, where a more extended supply pipeline needs to be managed.

Throughout its growth the company’s original pledge to provide orthopaedic surgeons and their patients with the latest technology, the finest quality and the best support, has remained constant.

The complex nature of Finsbury’s products necessitate highly specialised manufacturing processes, such as routing through both general and specific production areas. Casting, finishing and sterilisation processes, some elements of which can only be completed using specific equipment, also necessitate a high degree of capacity planning and scheduling.

Regulatory pressures and Finsbury’s own quality processes demand that a very stringent level of product traceability is achieved. Finsbury’s IS Manager, Linda Gyngell explains: “We have to be able to trace each implant both backwards and forwards in the supply chain – we must know to whom and when it was sold and from which material batch and when it was made. The previous Pegasus & Opera Operations System had to be linked to external records, making these processes very labour intensive and awkward. This required multiple data entry and duplicated effort.” Quite simply, Finsbury had outgrown its existing system.

Finsbury determined that it required a fully integrated system, able to manage business across all of its sites. Ideally they required a modern ERP system with a high level of future proofing, so that it would be able to grow with the company as it expanded.

A short list of two contenders, Sage Line 500 and EFACS E/8 was finally drawn up. Gyngell recalls, “Above all we wanted an integrated system that was not based upon a proprietary database format and which used the latest internet interconnectivity technologies. We liked the fact that Exel are UK based and are also the software authors, and that EFACS offers great bespoking potential. We could see that a partnership with Exel would be a long term benefit in helping us grow our business.”

Implementation commenced in late 2003 with installation of Sales Order Processing and Accounts in the German sales office. A gradual approach was chosen by Finsbury, in order to minimise disruption. By summer 2004 Works Order Processing was operating on a specific product range in the main manufacturing site. A gradual transition was made with data being meticulously cleaned and transferred from the legacy Pegasus system into EFACS.

Finsbury is now using EFACS exclusively, with successful implementations of Shop Floor Data Collection (SFDC), and more recently MRP. This gradual approach has enabled the implementation to run simultaneously with a period of very strong business growth. Gyngell explains, “Whilst it’s been frustrating at times trying to get the system to fit the moving target of our business processes, we have not had to re-implement the entire system, which could easily have been the case with a less flexible system. Changing one or two fields can transform the user’s experience of the system and help overcome the natural resistance to using new software.”

Finsbury’s Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs Manager highlights how EFACS plays a role in fulfilling regulatory requirements vis-à-vis traceability: “EFACS helps ensure that we can confidently maintain this and demonstrate it to any regulatory authority”.

Even with the final stages of implementation still underway, Finsbury’s Master Planner is able to observe, “We are 95% there in terms of having production planning sorted, with vastly improved visibility of work in progress, and are able to make more effective use of our capacity and resources.”

Finsbury’s Business Improvement Manager sees real benefits from EFACS’ ability to present live, accurate and relevant data across the system, and regards EFACS as an essential constituent of Finsbury’s future business plans. Gyngell agrees, and is convinced not only by EFACS’ ability to adapt to Finsbury’s requirements, but also by its potential to help facilitate the company’s future growth.