Customer Success Story: Synovis Life Technologies

The vital importance of medical products manufacturing gives even routine activities extra significance. Synovis Interventional Solutions (a division of Synovis Life Technologies) depends on Vantage by Epicor to manage its manufacturing and precision machining operations.

At a Glance

“Because all the Vantage modules are integrated, there is good information flow to track everything that happens,” says Alex Neutgens, controller with Synovis Interventional Solutions. “We’re able to follow a product from quote through shipment, which is very important for both FDA and ISO requirements.”

Synovis Interventional Solutions is a diversified medical products company that develops devices for the interventional treatment of disease. Between the financial requirements of a publicly traded company and the FDA regulations of a medical products manufacturer, Synovis must be able to track and document virtually all its processes and products in painstaking detail.

The company has been using Epicor Vantage since 1997, maintaining most information about products and production history in the system. For example, users must enter their personal password in Vantage whenever working in the system. Vantage creates a footprint or device history record for each action regarding a device, tracking who worked on it and when.

Synovis’ interventional businesses include producing critical wire components for medical devices and contract manufacturing services such as precision machining and polymer production. Synovis markets its own proprietary products and also manufactures parts for well-known medical device companies all over the world.

Easy to Use, Learn

Erica Steffens, IT Project Manager at Synovis, was involved in the original Vantage implementation. She says that being able to look up information quickly and easily is one of the system’s biggest benefits. “This is a definite strength of Vantage,” she explains. “With the Vantage Trackers, you can follow one piece of information throughout the system, without having to back out of screens and go into other modules.”

In her role providing IT support throughout the company, Steffens sees Vantage from the perspective of every department and function, from implementation to front-line training and support.

She believes the system is easy to learn. “The screens are all laid out similarly, once you learn one area or module in Vantage, it is pretty easy to learn the others,” she explains. “Epicor’s terminology is also very clear and straightforward, with online help available if necessary.”

A regular attendee at Epicor’s annual Perspectives conference, Steffens values the opportunity to learn about future plans for Vantage and how to maximize the benefits of the current version. Networking with other Vantage users is also an effective way to share tips and solutions.

“I always come away from Perspectives with a lot of good ideas,” says Steffens, who also participates in the Minnesota Vantage user group.

Flexible, Powerful Reporting

For day-to-day operations, Synovis has developed a library of custom reports, tracking all the key metrics for running its business, including efficiencies, variances on jobs, margins and revenue. Vantage provides all the key information required to give an accurate, real-time summary of business conditions and key metrics.

“We’re able to utilize the reporting tools in Vantage to extract all the necessary information in a timely, efficient manner,” comments Neutgens. He says the majority of these reports are online, making Synovis a paperless company. The Document Management module enables Synovis personnel on the production floor to quickly access any document at any time. Customized production schedule reports are run for each department every morning, showing what to work on that day.

The Time-Phase Material Report improves Synovis’ responsiveness to customer orders. With it, the purchasing department can quickly check inventory levels and order additional materials if necessary based on customer demands or specific min-max levels defined in Vantage. Together with proper order-cancellation procedures, this has essentially eliminated obsolete inventory. Slow-moving inventory is traced in the change log to determine the root causes.

Synovis uses other reports to trace material lot numbers, meeting both FDA requirements and customer demands. For example, if a customer calls about a certain wire lot number, real-time information can be quickly pulled up on all jobs linked to that lot number.

“Otherwise we’d be digging through files manually,” explains Steffens, who adds that although these customer requests are infrequent, Synovis must be able to respond quickly when asked.

The integrated Vantage system means there is less paperwork and hands-on administrative support needed to manage the system as Synovis grows. “We’re able to keep staffing levels down in customer service because it is easy to access information needed with Vantage,” says Steffens.

By leveraging Vantage’s capabilities to increase efficiency, Synovis has been able to grow more than 50 percent per year with only a 25 percent increase in administrative staffing. When the Synovis Interventional Solutions division started on Vantage in 1997, revenues were $4.1 million. By fiscal 2003, revenues had climbed to $32.3 million.

Accounting is another area where Synovis realizes savings from reduced data entry and repetitive work. Because the Vantage system interfaces with the general ledger, the accounts payable department simply matches up invoices with data previously entered by the receiving department. Invoices for the accounts receivable department are generated automatically from packing slips.

Future Plans

Neutgens says there are currently 45 Vantage users and 17 data collection terminals at his facility in Minnesota; the company’s manufacturing facility in Puerto Rico has 10 users and five data collection terminals. He says Vantage was selected for the plant in Puerto Rico because of its ease of use.

The company plans to add the Multi-Site Management module in the first half of 2004. “We have a lot of inter-company sales between Minnesota and Puerto Rico, which are more cumbersome to manage with separate systems,” he explains. Synovis also plans on adding the CRM module in 2004.

In the future, Synovis expects to manufacture more core components in Puerto Rico, for direct shipment to customers’ facilities nearby. The facility in Lino Lakes, a northern suburb of St. Paul, will focus on both contract manufacturing and making proprietary products.

Vantage utilization has increased in Minnesota, with more people using the system – almost doubling in the past year. Synovis engineers, for example, had never entered information in the system before. Now they are encouraged to use the Engineering Workbench to develop the bill of materials while in the quoting and production stage, which speeds up the process. Making changes to the Methods Master, instead of by hand, saves re-entry time and reduces errors from illegible writing. Neutgens says the Workbench is also a helpful tool to control the checking in and out of documents.

“With Vantage our employees have a greater ownership in the process – understanding what’s going in the system and tracking the parts they set up,” says Neutgens. “As our company has grown, our use of Vantage has helped us manage our growth.”