The team at Israel-based Fize Medical needed PLM to take their innovative medical device to market quickly so they embarked on a thoughtful journey to assess the options.
Not because they needed sophisticated PLM features or had complex PLM lifecycle requirements. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Fize had an important product under development which they needed to get to market using accepted and reliable design and manufacturing methods.
Fize is solving a unique but important medical device problem – the urine collection devices used in hospital ICUs today are outdated “catch containers” with analog graduated scales used to record volumetric measurements.
Capable of connecting directly to the hospital’s digital EMR medical systems network, like heart and other vital monitors, the device allows the renal output information to be presented and processed more quickly by hospital medical professionals.
Like so many startups they started with Excel but quickly realizing it did not scale as the company did! “Trying to manage a product evolution in Excel gave me nightmares” says Senior Mechanical Engineer David Rubli. “We quickly realized we needed a solution that fit our needs.”
David and Fize researched several alternatives and quickly made the decision to go with OpenBOM. “It was real out of the box functionality like I’ve never seen before!” said David. I was able to start working the moment I signed in.”
“Furthermore the Onshape integration with OpenBOM was the best in the business and the subscription model fit our budget perfectly” he goes on to say. “I love the automatic part numbering system, I just click and get the next part number in a sequence I’ve defined.”
Fize sees the real benefit as OpenBOM simply manages the day-to-day evolution of the product. “As we evolve the product, everyone in the Company can see the total costs, parts, structure, and more,” says David Rubli.
OpenBOM not only masters the Fize development products but their sales and marketing SKUs as well including packaging, country variants, compliance testing materials, and so much more. “We have a separate SKU for Country-specific materials like power supplies and cables,” says David. They are part of the product structure and have their own SKU to ease the shipping and fulfillment activity to our customers.
According to David Rubli of Fize, “OpenBOM is doing the work of a full-fledged (much more expensive) PLM for us, we get 80% of the functionality at 20% of the cost, it’s easy to start and run with one low monthly price. We are extremely satisfied with our decision to use OpenBOM to build our products.”
To learn more about Fize Medical please visit www.fizemedical.com
To learn more about OpenBOM please visit www.openbom.com
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