Arrhythmia Research Technology Inc. (Fitchburg, MA) and its subsidiary Micron Products Inc. manufacture a range of different products, including sensors and custom injection-molded components for the medical and electronics industries. Recently, the company decided it needed to get better control of its production management and reporting processes, in part so that it would comply with the reporting requirements called for by the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act and the Federal Drug Administration.

To do this, the company implemented a full suite of repetitive manufacturing, discrete manufacturing, engineer-to-order, distribution, demand planning, human resources, financial integration and shop floor reporting software from IFS (Schaumburg, IL). Information technology integrator Corning Data Services Inc. (Corning, NY) installed the hardware and software making up the system.

In addition to its many performance requirements, Arrhythmia Research Technology needed the system to be up and running as quickly as possible. Ultimately, IFS and Corning had the system in place and working in less than 4 months.

“One reason for our [enterprise resource planning system] search was to proactively meet new SOX reporting requirements that will be enforced January 1, 2008,” says Arrhythmia IT director, Salvatore Emma. “We were convinced that IFS Applications would be able to meet our diverse business needs and aggressive implementation timeline. At the same time, we needed to choose a vendor that could meet our budget requirements and help us to eliminate a variety of software systems we previously had in place.”

In addition, Emma says his company went with the software because of its flexibility and scalability.

“The [software] has proven agile enough to implement quickly, so we could be fully functional with the system an entire quarter before the reporting requirements deadline in January,” Emma says. “The IFS Applications implementation has also shown us that our systems will be able to support the growth and strategic goals of the organization in the future.”

For more on ERP software, visit www.ifsworld.com. For more on IT system integration, visit www.corningdata.com.