Tuesday, January 06, 2004

Enterprise software vendors catching on to medical device marketplace

I'm attending the Medical Design & Manufacturing (MD&M) West show in Anaheim, CA this week, representing Computer Economics, and will try to blog some of my observations from the show.

After attending this show last year, I wondered why more application software vendors didn't participate as exhibitors. MD&M West is billed as the largest medical OEM tradeshow in the world, and this is an industry that has many growing companies that should be looking for software. Nevertheless, last year there were only a handful of software vendors on the floor, mostly quality management and manufacturing execution system (MES) vendors. This year there are a few more. Here's a partial list.
ERP solutions: Exact Software, IFS, IQMS, Syspro, and Columbus IT Partner (a reseller of Microsoft Business Solutions Axapta product). But still no sign of the big three -- SAP, Oracle, and PeopleSoft.

Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) and Factory Automation: Datasweep, Camstar, GE Fanuc Automation

Quality Management: AssurX, Netregulus, Pilgrim Software, Tip Technologies, EtQ, Inc., Minitab

Product Lifecycle Management: Dassault Systems

Customer Relationship Management: ADAPT Software

Document Management: Hyland Software
Show floor traffic seems a little light this year. Several of the vendors think it has to do with the fact that the show is scheduled for the first week back from December holiday period.

The exposition runs today through Thursday (Jan. 6-8). Admission to the show floor is free. More details are on the MD&M West web site.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

We went live with IQMS in January of 2005 after a year and a half of intense evaluation of various ERP solutions, including several from some of the larger vendors. We felt that IQMS by far provided the best fit for us as an injection molder. After 3 years in action, we still feel we made the right decision. IQMS provides an extremely robust solution with many functions for the plastics industry that just aren't available in other software packages. The IQMS staff is very knowledgeable, responsive, and helpful which makes maintenance fairly straightforward and simple. Running IQMS has helped us take a giant leap forward in just about every aspect of our business.

Mike Moore
New Berlin Plastics, Inc.
New Berlin, WI