Kent-based Cantium Scientific manufactures microbial air samplers used for sampling bacteria, fungal spores, and viruses from the atmosphere in hospitals, sterile production facilities, food packaging, dairy processing, as well as for indoor air quality testing in offices and schools.

Recently, the company introduced MRPeasy, a cloud-based ERP/MRP system for small manufacturers and distributors, to face the increasing intricacies forming within its operations.

Like many small businesses, Cantium Scientific initially managed its inventory and production intuitively and on paper. As the company established a market foothold and scaled up operations, the team moved on to spreadsheets – however, with the growing complexity of their bills of materials, keeping the sheets up to date became a data nightmare.

Complex bills of materials necessitated a move towards MRP

The next solution pursued was to explore the extended use of its current accounting software, but it proved unable to effectively handle its production activity.

As a result, Cantium Scientific decided to look for a cloud-based MRP system that could accommodate the intricacies of its specific use-case, providing layered bills of materials, integration of its current accounting software and a cost-effective price-point.

After conducting a discovery phase reviewing a number of offerings, Cantium Scientific selected MRPeasy.



Cantium Scientific manufactures microbial air samplers

Implementation took a single month

Since MRPeasy was Cantium Scientific’s first go at implementing an MRP system, there were no complex integrations or bespoke systems that needed to be carried over besides the accounting software. With the existing integrations of that software on MRPeasy, however, streamlining the two systems went very smoothly.

Managing director, Stephen Plumridge, summarises: “The implementation went quite quickly, we got fully functional within a month. We sat down for several days and put everything in it, starting simple as the company was a lot less complex back then. We did a phased rollout with one product, putting the parts in, and then continued to add parts when new orders came in.”

Stephen also lauds MRPeasy’s responsiveness in developing new functionality based on customer feedback.

“Support has always been very good as well – you get a problem, and it gets sorted immediately.”

A perfect match for the electronics manufacturer

Due to a successful implementation phase and the subsequent increase in efficiency, productivity and worker satisfaction, Cantium Scientific has found a near perfect match in MRPeasy.

“We’ve grown with it, and it’s grown with us,” Stephen says. “Realising what we can do with it, we’ve put more and more into MRPeasy and today everything’s linked with it from shipping to invoices. MRPeasy effectively runs our business for us. It’s the framework for how we manage things. With customers in 50 countries, it helps keeps us stay on track of everything. “

MRPeasy is a cloud-based ERP/MRP system for small manufacturers and distributors. For more information and a free trial, visit www.mrpeasy.com