Biomet, Inc. and its subsidiaries design, manufacture and market surgical and non-surgical products used primarily by orthopedic surgeons and other musculoskeletal medical specialists.
Biomet relied on iSolutions to create a FileMaker database solution to track the complex, multi-stage process of completing RFC’s (Request For Change ) for changes stored in the SAP system that runs their day-to-day operations. Biomet stores all their critical data in an SAP system and FileMaker is used to serve as a front-end tool for providing users access to that data.
A new process of change control was mandated by Biomet Corporate, which caused the amount of paperwork needed for tracking changes to skyrocket. Biomet had previously been using an Excel document to track changes and that meant that only one person could have the document open at once for editing. The upcoming increase in changes were going to be a nightmare for Biomet.
Users had no visibility as to where the progress was on the RFC’s and who needed to make the correct actions to get a change pushed through. If the documents were not signed in time the company could face fines for being out of compliance with their system.
iSolutions helped solve this problem by creating an extremely fast, multi-user WAN-based system that allows all users to quickly see the progress of all active RFC’s and identify who an RFC is waiting on and how far behind it is. The solution allows creation of the RFCs from a list of issues submitted by the business, giving the business units visibility of the progress IT was making on their needs.
The system also includes custom reports that drive regular (and critical) meetings that help the business have visibility to the progress of the entire development team in Colorado.
The FileMaker system did not replace the SAP system, but instead provides a custom front-end interface to help solve data management issues in a fraction of the time that it would take to build a custom interface in other applications. The FileMaker solution was developed during their critical hyper-care stage of development, post deployment of a major SAP expansion. Major amounts of time have been saved and the project manager feels that this tool made the situation of tracking these metrics go from unmanageable to business-as-usual.
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