If you have a favorite pair of lululemon yoga pants or running shorts, you’ve probably used Noble Biomaterials’ products. But the company’s silver-fiber technology is found in much more than athletic and cleaning fabrics.
Noble Biomaterials was founded in 1997 to solve the issue of stinky hiking and skiing sock liners. It started out as an intelligent materials company focused on selling silver fiber technology for its antimicrobial properties. Since then, it has grown into a multinational life-sustaining business – an essential sole-source technology supplier of medical components and antimicrobial products to the U.S. military and healthcare industry. As an FDA-registered medical device manufacturing facility, with numerous 510(k) medical device clearances and several EPA-approved antimicrobial products, Noble produces items used in hospitals, burn care centers, military installations and U.S. embassies around the world.
Challenge: One Tool with One Version of the Truth Needed
When Noble Biomaterials originally implemented an ERP solution, the company used it mainly for financial and accounting management. Management and the IT team wanted to add one solution; one tool that would deliver one version of the truth supporting company-wide processes, such as sales forecasting and planning, maintenance planning, quality management and fixed asset management. They also wanted to replace manual, paper-based solutions for project management and collaboration. They were especially looking for one system of record to cover all manufacturing operations and business processes with real-time data, visuals and metrics in an easy-to-use solution.
“Over the years, we added some third-party solutions and we were using spreadsheets to try to keep ourselves organized,” commented Noble Biomaterials Chief Financial Officer Tom Bross. “Management doubted the accuracy of the manufacturing data produced by these disparate solutions. We knew we needed to do something to fix it.”
“Another benefit is the enhanced capture of production data from the plant floor through the implementation of QAD Production Execution. We address every step of our operating process and as a result, we now have real-time data reported at every step of the operation. It’s eliminated some of the manual tracking in other systems as well,” added Bross.
Capturing Production Data
Noble Biomaterials implemented QAD Adaptive ERP in the cloud with an adaptable, role-based user experience (UX) and QAD’s Production Execution solution. The company implemented the solution covering discrete sales, requisition-to-purchase-orders for indirect materials, Fixed Assets and Return Material Authorizations (RMAs). QAD also introduced a new “Rolling Sales Forecast” Enterprise Platform app and Enterprise Platform extension for the Adaptive UX Sales Order entry screen, capturing criteria business categorization fields.
QAD Production Execution delivers shop floor operational data in real time to manage operations more efficiently. It offers:
- An intuitive, operator-centric interface
- Full time-stamped data capture
- Collaboration between planning and operations for better decision-making
- System flexibility, integration and maintainability to adapt to specific production environments
The solution’s features give Noble Biomaterials the data (and data accuracy) to optimize its resources, fulfill product orders more quickly and reduce inventory costs. The scalability of QAD Adaptive ERP accommodates the company’s expected growth and expansion while unifying all business processes under one ERP solution.
Solution: Manual Processes and Spreadsheets Replaced by ERP
By replacing spreadsheets with QAD Adaptive ERP, Noble Biomaterials can now monitor real-time KPIs with the solution’s embedded analytics and Action Centers. Management is then able to monitor real-time scheduling, produce-to-schedule and scrap rate data.
“The KPIs from the Action Centers were a strong selling point and an area where we’ll gain greater insight into our business. We think there are even more time savings as we can get everyone using the Action Centers as their one source of data,” said Bross. “The Operations team wanted the data in a format that’s easily digestible and that’s what QAD supplies.”
Using QAD Automation Solutions, Noble has reduced shipping-to-invoicing processing time and eliminated manual, paper-based processes. Further concentrating operations under one solution, the company was able to replace a third-party application to manage sales forecasts, with more reliable data from QAD Adaptive ERP. In all, Noble reduced its use of third-party customizations by 80%.
To learn more about Noble Biomaterials and their journey to becoming an Adaptive Manufacturing Enterprise, read the full case study.
