UK-based Independent NeuroScience Services (INSS) leads the way in bespoke Multiphoton Microscopy systems and consulting. The activities are extremely high-tech in the important neuroscience medical field, and OpenBOM is proud to have worked alongside them for nearly 5 years!
Headquartered in East Sussex, near the south coast of England, the firm’s Founder and Director, Dr. Bruno Pichler, relies on OpenBOM to help INSS deliver extremely precise microscope solutions to their clients worldwide.
Make no mistake, this is a very niche field and each product has its own set of requirements and challenges.
“INSS delivers products based on our client’s specific requirements, making each microscope essentially a one-off; they are a mix of classic Engineer to Order and leading-edge consulting”, Bruno explains.
“We see ourselves as the general contractor of the multiphoton microscope business”, referring to the fact that all their clients have specific needs and goals.
“INSS has relied on OpenBOM for many years,” he says. “I believe our first BOM is from 2018.”
As early adopters of OpenBOM, the firm has relied on OpenBOM to literally bring best-in-class manufacturing business processes to INSS.
“As OpenBOM adds features and functionality, we evaluate and incorporate them into our engineering business process”, he says.
“We rely on OpenBOM to guide us in best practices in many areas of the engineering and manufacturing planning of our products.”
The company’s clients have come to rely on INSS expertise to deliver what they need at an exceptional value.
Bruno goes on to say, “We love how OpenBOM helps us manage our designed parts alongside purchased parts in a single process then deliver them to our client’s laboratory, often overseas, where they can be assembled.”
The company’s Engineering Manager, Angelos Loukidis, is on the frontline every day of design and BOM management at INSS.
“We found OpenBOM easy to learn and re-learn”, he says, “I like how the application guides my team in the best practices in BOM management.”
Angelos, who brings expertise in automation, mechanical engineering, and computer-aided design to the firm, is responsible for translating the client’s requirements into a product.
“Every microscope is custom and requires its own bill of materials, with many components, some designed and built by us, some off the shelf.”
“The OpenBOM Create BOM from Template command makes it easy for us to create a new BOM with all the properties pre-defined and immediately start filling in the items”, Angelos explains.
Looking back, Dr. Bruno Pichler explains they had a few, but specific, requirements when they went looking for BOM and process management resources in 2018.
“As a young company, we needed a low hurdle to entry, which included the cost to purchase and to implement. We wanted a spreadsheet, people all over the world, in all languages, understand a spreadsheet. We found many of the other BOM tools to be clunky, data entry style user experiences that did not fit our agile business process.”
“We were surprised to learn that OpenBOM was free to start using, the prices were public, and the app was sold and supported entirely online.”
“What we really like is how OpenBOM brought a set of best practices to our company, right out of the box.”
“In the years since we purchased OpenBOM, there have been many significant improvements and enhancements, many of which we embraced immediately and others we are still planning”, he explains.
“But the core product features that sold us on OpenBOM remain the same; the familiar spreadsheet user interface, easy to import and export data to other systems, outstanding support, and a great value.”
“It just works the way we work.”
“We continue to renew our OpenBOM subscription every year for the same reason our clients come to us, they focus on the business task, and nothing else.”
To learn more about INSS, please visit https://www.inss.org.uk
To learn more about OpenBOM, please visit www.openbom.com
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