Case Study: Medical Device Manufacturing With Epicor ERP

Encompass Solutions recently celebrated another successful go-live with a longtime partner and client. This company has several divisions, though this project took focus on Medical Device Manufacturing With Epicor ERP. The project focused on on-site locations in the United States and Costa Rica. The company’s primary Epicor team consists of three resources, supporting approximately 700 employees. The medical device manufacturing company utilizes several Epicor ERP components including all major modules, Advanced Material Management (AMM), Quick Ship, and Manufacturing Execution System (MES).

The Project

The project scope was to upgrade an existing Epicor 9.05.702a to Epicor 10.2.400. The upgrade project would also need to account for hundreds of custom BPMs, Dashboards, Reports, SQL Tools, and linked systems that had built up over the years. Additionally, a transition to an FDA validated environment with proper change control was necessary. All of this happened on a typical non-holiday weekend, with some manufacturing departments on-site and actively working.

The Encompass Solutions Team was responsible for:

Project planning and estimating
Project management
Technical assistance uplifting customizations, reports and dashboards,
Hardware configuration and sizing recommendations
All aspects of the data conversion
Conversion planning and preparation
System test planning

The Plan

An Encompass Solutions project manager was handed the sequencing and timing authority to map the timeline, deliverables, and overall upgrade project plan. At a high level, there were timelines created for Test Conversions, Technical Uplift Tasks, UAT, and Validation.

The project would follow Encompass Solutions’ standard upgrade methodology. This began by estimating the uplift effort, as that would drive the remainder the schedule.

The Execution

Once the project plan was established, Encompass and the client stood up the new 10.2.400 environment and performed the first pass conversion.

The next phase of the project, and most lengthy, focused on uplifting and unit testing over 800 objects (UI customizations, reports, BPMs, dashboard, and more)

Once the uplift was complete, a second pass conversion was performed. This served as the first conversion where we started to look at the length of the conversion, cleaning up errors and started to put together the conversion validation steps. This conversion served as the basis for system test.

System test planning started three months prior to the test. The actual test was conducted over a three-week period by the client and Encompass Solutions.

Upon completion of system test, we executed a third pass conversion. This served to further test our conversion process and procedures. This also provided a clean database for the client to perform their validation process as required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. After FDA validation was complete, we executed a fourth pass conversion to finalize all conversion weekend steps, processes validations, timing, and reconciliation.

As part of planning, a series of test and practice installs took place prior to Go Live. During the weekend of Go Live, the project was within15 minutes of the anticipated Go-Live time. Encompass was onsite for the event, and post-Go Live, as needed.

“Perhaps the most surprising detail was that [Encompass] have taken ownership of most errors and bugs and seen them through resolution, which takes a lot of work off our team.”

– IT Business Analysis Manager

The Results

Go live was a smooth process. The client was able to successfully make jobs, ship parts, and collect payments. Aside from a few hiccups, 90% of the users are having a better experience with the updated Epicor ERP system. Of the 10% that didn’t have as great of an experience, these were mostly due to changes in behavior from Epicor 9 to Epicor 10, almost all of which were discovered during UAT. This means that during Go-Live there were very few surprises.

Next Steps

The company’s next steps including taking the Epicor 10 foundation and expanding it to two more locations in 2020 and a third in 2021. The client has already invited the same Encompass Solutions project team to assist in those future projects.

Encompass has also been engaged to support projects that will provide order integration with the client’s European operations, implement a vendor management inventory solution, as well as bring additional sites onto Epicor ERP.

Company Details

Established: 1999
Location: USA, Costa Rica
Industry: Manufacturing, Medical Devices
Previous System – Epicor ERP 9.05.702a
Current System – Epicor ERP 10.2.400
Deployment – On Prem

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions, Inc. is an ERP consulting firm, NetSuite Solution Provider and Epicor Gold Partner that offers professional services in business consulting, project management, and software implementation. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, and renovation of existing systems or addressing the emerging challenges in corporate and operational growth, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. As experts in identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of Industry.