Product Lifecycle Management and Epicor Integration Improves Manufacturing Process for Advanced Oncotherapy

Developer of next-gen proton therapy system for cancer treatment gains immediate ROI by automating data transfers with BPA Platform

Codeless Platforms today revealed that Advanced Oncotherapy Plc, the developer of LIGHT, a breakthrough proton therapy system for cancer treatment, gained immediate ROI from deploying BPA Platform to integrate its product lifestyle management (PLM) software from Autodesk with its Epicor ERP system. The organisation has now automated the transfer of transactional data, providing better transparency and improving the manufacturing process.

“ROI was achieved within a couple of months of using BPA Platform, thanks to the ease of integration and the time savings that we have achieved. It helped us get the company up and running a lot quicker and also enabled us to concentrate on developing the machine,” revealed Wim Hulsbergen, Vice President Information Technology, Advanced Oncotherapy Plc.

The LIGHT system is based on work by ADAM (Applications of Detectors and Accelerators to Medicine), originally a spin-off of CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research), which Advanced Oncotherapy purchased in 2013. The production of the LIGHT machine is fully managed in Advanced Oncotherapy’s product lifecycle management (PLM) software from Autodesk, which provides enterprise-wide collaboration for all involved in the product lifecycle - from engineering and supply chain to quality and manufacturing.

“Everything is going through our product lifecycle management software, including the smallest screw or bolt, or whatever we need to build the system. From there, all the transactional data and information needs to be passed into Epicor, our ERP system. This then creates our bill of materials based on the revisions of the items that have come from the PLM,” explained Wim Hulsbergen.

The team at Advanced Oncotherapy had integrated its PLM software with Epicor using bespoke code. When Wim Hulsbergen joined the company in January 2020 he realised that the integration and the data transparency could be further improved. BPA Platform was therefore deployed to provide the integration between PLM and Epicor, as well as to automate the synchronisation and cross-referencing of data between the two systems.

“As soon as data changes in our PLM software, BPA Platform pulls the information from it and then uses the standard API calls of Epicor to create or update parts and suppliers in Epicor. The benefit that we now have is that everything is in one application – the PLM is our master database and Epicor contains the transactional data. We have completely automated this with BPA Platform, and everything is completely synchronised,” revealed Wim Hulsbergen.

“I now know that we have a clean database to work from. When we test an item BPA Platform automatically checks Epicor to see if that item matches the configuration in the PLM. We can run that on a quarterly or a monthly basis, or whenever we want, to ensure that the data is accurate. The data accuracy needs to be 100%, not 99.99999%. Therefore, being able to automate this, to make sure the data that we are utilising to build the medical device is 100% accurate, is a huge benefit.”

Having integrated the PLM software with Epicor, and getting a better understanding of BPA Platform’s capabilities, Wim Hulsbergen decided to use BPA Platform to integrate other systems with Epicor, including Expensify, an expense management system.

“We have an external, cloud-based expense application, Expensify, in which people can input their expenses. We have set up an API to retrieve the latest submitted expenses and then create an AP invoice in Epicor to automate the payment of that. I’m also going to use BPA Platform to upload the GL accounts that are allowed to be used in Expensify,” concluded Wim Hulsbergen.

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Stuart Tarrant - Head of Communications

About Codeless Platforms
Founded in 1999, Codeless Platforms is at the forefront of business process automation and rapid application development. We have a proven track record of developing and delivering agile, flexible and robust next generation software solutions, empowering businesses to get the most from their data as well as the ability to respond to the rapidly changing business demands of today. Our knowledge of the marketplace and channel has grown in line with this development and established us as a highly experienced and reputable software company, working closely with partners and software vendors, such as Access, Epicor, Infor, Microsoft, Sage, SAP and SYSPRO. With over 450 global partners, more than 8500 customers use Codeless Platforms’ software solutions, ranging from diverse global organisations to the small local enterprise. The company is headquartered in Poole, UK, with representative offices throughout the world. Learn more: www.codelessplatforms.com

This release was published on openPR.