Moog Medical

The Company: About Moog Medical

THREE SITES. ONE SYSTEM. ZERO REGRETS: MOOG MEDICAL’S MOVE TO QAD ADAPTIVE ERP

Moog Medical, a leading medical device manufacturer of feeding pumps, infusion pumps, hand pieces and sensors, is in the business of saving lives. From neonatal nutrition to pain management and critical care, the company’s devices support patients of all ages at home, in hospitals and in intensive care units around the world.

Its operations are centered in Salt Lake City, Utah, where the team manufactures pumps, repairs returned devices and produces advanced ultrasonic technologies. All enteral feeding pump repairs in North America are processed through this site, where hundreds of thousands of devices have been restored and returned to patients in need. Moog Medical, a division of Moog, Inc., also operates manufacturing facilities in San Jose, Costa Rica and Vilnius, Lithuania, as well as an OEM-focused site in Buffalo, New York.

While Moog Medical’s engineering capabilities are world-class, what truly defines the company is its commitment to patient safety, trust and shared purpose. In Salt Lake City, service technicians rotate roles every two hours to reduce repetitive stress. In Costa Rica, lean manufacturing principles earned the team a prized Shingo Award for organizational excellence. Across every site and department, decisions are made with one goal in mind: delivering the best possible outcomes for patients, caregivers and clinicians.

Moog Medical became a QAD customer in 2017 and has continued to grow on the platform, despite some other Moog business units transitioning to a more one-size-fits-all approach with another major ERP solution. For Moog Medical, it was an intentional decision that reflects its need for a system purpose-built for regulatory requirements, operational agility, and the complex needs of life sciences manufacturing.

The Situation: Remain Audit-Ready and Compliant

AS MOOG MEDICAL GREW, SO DID ITS NEED FOR A MORE MODERN ERP

For life sciences manufacturers, choosing the right ERP system is about so much more than features. The right solution also needs to help them remain audit-ready, compliant and efficient in a highly regulated environment – which is exactly what Moog Medical prioritized when it implemented QAD ERP in 2017.

The solution offered the control, traceability and validation Moog Medical needed as it scaled its operations and expanded globally. However, as the business matured and complexity increased, its needs began to shift.

“Legacy ERP worked, and it worked well,” shared Jade Eldridge, Program Manager of Business Systems at Moog Medical. ​“But our business – we’re growing, and we care about growth and modernization and automation – and legacy just couldn’t help us in the ways we needed.”

As expectations increased, so did the pressure to stay aligned with evolving regulations and shifting customer demands, explained Kerry Howard-Kramer, Director of Business Systems at Moog Medical. ​“It’s a security risk if you’re not current and, at the end of the day, that’s above all else. We need to be compliant,” said Howard-Kramer.

At the same time, Moog Medical began to see other signs that it had outgrown its existing system. Many planning and scheduling activities still relied on Excel and teams across different sites managed work instructions in different ways. ​“We needed to be more efficient in our business, especially on our service line,” stated Eldridge.

The Solution: QAD Adaptive 

MOOG MEDICAL MINIMIZES COMPLEXITY AND MAXIMIZES CONSISTENCY WITH QAD ADAPTIVE ERP

Moog Medical made the decision to upgrade to QAD Adaptive ERP in 2024, with QAD Professional Services leading the implementation. The plan was to stay close to standard, minimize customizations and roll out a system that could be used consistently across the company’s three global sites.

“When we decided to implement QAD Adaptive ERP, we sat down and decided that we were going to utilize it out of the box – what we kind of euphemistically refer to as shrink wrap,” explained Mike Henderson, Vice President and General Manager at Moog Medical.

“There’s a minimal amount of customization and we wanted to make sure that we didn’t have a whole bunch of rogue programs or middleware taking away from the functionality of the QAD environment,” continued Henderson. This key step in the implementation ensured that each site was running on the same version of QAD Adaptive ERP, configured to its local language needs.

From an operations perspective, Eldridge shared that her main goal was to complete the project without disrupting the flow of business, and services in particular. To her surprise, the transition created new opportunities.

“Our service manager could completely customize his queue logic without relying on my department. That changes the game entirely. You’re not waiting on a ticket – he had the tools at his fingertips to do it on his own.”

The new interface also improved the overall user experience. ​“With the upgrade, you no longer have that ​‘back/next, back/next’ layout,” Eldridge said. ​“Everything’s on one page and you just scroll. It sounds like a small thing, but for our business users, it was a big deal.”

“For us, the upgrade to QAD Adaptive ERP was a long time coming,” shared Howard-Kramer. 

The Benefits: QAD Adaptive Implementation Benefits

FASTER SERVICE, STRONGER COMPLIANCE AND A STRONG FOUNDATION FOR GROWTH

The impact of the upgrade was clear almost immediately – especially on the service side. ​“It used to take us about seven minutes to add parts for every depot order,” said Eldridge. ​“Since the move to QAD Adaptive ERP, we’ve gotten that down to under 30 seconds. It’s mind-blowing.”

That’s a 14-fold improvement in speed, and one of the first signs that the upgraded system was delivering on its promise.

Better yet, the gain didn’t come from customization, but from a cleaner, more modern system design. ​“I was hopeful the user experience of QAD Adaptive ERP would be better,” said Eldridge. ​“I didn’t expect it to be a complete game changer in certain areas.”

For Moog Medical, as a medical device manufacturer, the benefits extend far beyond task speed. The move to QAD Adaptive ERP helped standardize the company’s systems across its three sites while meeting region-specific language and compliance requirements. By deploying a single version of QAD across its operations, the team reduced variation, simplified validation and improved control across regulated processes.

“All three sites share information. We’re on the same ERP system, program management systems, document management system and quality systems. That enables us to move work around and have people work on different things in different locations,” shared Henderson.

Greater consistency also helps Moog Medical maintain the level of traceability and readiness that regulators expect. ​“We don’t have the problems others are working through with system integration,” continued Henderson. ​“The opportunity cost associated with having disparate systems is pretty high. You don’t see it in your income statement, but it’s definitely hitting you. We don’t have those problems with QAD in our master control environment.”

“With QAD Adaptive ERP, we’re probably well ahead of some of our sister organizations in the deployment of a strong, robust ERP system. It’s a differentiator for us,” said Henderson. ​“Our relationship with QAD has been excellent.”

Looking ahead, Moog Medical plans to stay current with each release and is exploring new features.

“If you want to be the best, you need to be running the best, especially in life sciences where everything comes back to quality, compliance and speed,” concluded Howard-Kramer.