7 October 2008

The new system will help us recognise problems faster and reduce the amount of product scrap

Michael Kilday, corporate director of quality assurance and regulatory affairs at Nypro Nypro, a global manufacturer of devices and equipment for the healthcare industry, mainly plastics, has adopted the use of electronic forms and dashboards for an efficient collection of data, which has the potential to save US$8 million.

A key challenge for Nypro is to ensure that every stage of the production process is managed and recorded in keeping with the US Food and Drug Administration requirements for medical product manufacturing. “Managers couldn’t view data in realtime because at the majority of plants it had to be printed or scanned first, and then sent to various locations by fax or e-mail,” says Michael Kilday, corporate director of quality assurance and regulatory affairs at Nypro. “Our sales and marketing teams couldn’t easily demonstrate our process control capabilities to customers because it required looking through large paper reports. We wanted to streamline our measurement and inspection processes, and reduce the amount of paper we used to cut operations overheads. At the same time, we wanted to give all of our technical community controlled Web access to the information, even those working outside the plant where the product was made.”

The company has already realised more than US$700,000 of cost savings associated with data collection efficiencies and reduced paper consumption. It has also used new services such as online product data management and account tracking to acquire new customers. Kilday says: “The new system will help us recognise problems faster and reduce the amount of product scrap. It could potentially save us US$8 million a year.”

Kilday worked with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Predisys, which customised its Manufacturing Analytical Suite to create a solution for Nypro that connects data from all of the company’s local manufacturing and quality data collection sources and presents it through a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 interface. Kilday says: “We investigated a number of providers but quickly realised that Predisys was committed to creating a solution tailored to our specific information requirements.”

The Predisys solution takes advantage of Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007, which is part of Office SharePoint Server 2007, to create FDAcompliant electronic records that document the required steps in a manufacturing process and meet customer specifications. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database software manages SPC data, while Predisys Statistical Analytics works with SQL Server Analysis Services to process and analyse data efficiently. Operational data is aggregated and displayed in real time through performance dashboards that Predisys created with Web Parts in Windows SharePoint Services.

Nypro and Predisys completed the first phase of the deployment in mid-2007. Kilday says: “We plan to deploy the solution company-wide by the end of 2009. The initial success is inspiring us to look at other business areas that can benefit from integration with Office SharePoint Server 2007. With help from Predisys, we will continue to develop our environment and take advantage of Microsoft technologies to support business operations.”

This article first appeared in the Autumn 2008 edition of Prime magazine.