(Source: Business Wire)Eyelit Inc., a manufacturing software provider for visibility, control, and coordination of manufacturing operations for the aerospace and defense, discrete electronics, semiconductor, and photovoltaic (solar) industries, announced today that M/A-COM Technology Solutions Inc. selected Eyelit's MES software suite and replaced its legacy software suite at two wafer labs located in Lowell, Massachusetts and Torrance, California.

M/A-COM Tech selected Eyelit's solution to modernize its manufacturing software infrastructure and significantly lower the total cost of ownership and resource dependencies of its older system. The move to Eyelit MES enables M/A-COM Tech to standardize to one manufacturing software provider, simplifying its software architecture while gaining capability and flexibility. It also provides a platform to easily add equipment automation and integrate Quality Management tasks, such as OCAP, QAR, and MRB.

The migration took eight weeks to move the legacy MES data model and active WIP to Eyelit MES. M/A-COM Tech now has a fully integrated MES, Asset Management, and SPC solution. With Eyelit's system, M/A-COM Tech was able to eliminate 12 custom software programs, which are now incorporated into the standard Eyelit model. M/A-COM Tech was also able to add new production areas, which were not previously modeled in the legacy MES, to the Eyelit model and to preserve the MES/ERP integration with SAP, M/A-COM Tech's ERP system.

"We experienced exceptional support from Eyelit during this successful migration and already we see Eyelit's product as an enabling technology. We've simplified our model and already eliminated many of the custom programs we needed to augment the limitations of our legacy MES. With our legacy MES product, we questioned the value of our support dollars and what we were getting in return," said Charles Gagne, Director of Wafer Operations, M/A-COM Technologies Solutions Inc. "We've been an Eyelit customer, using Operator Station, PRemote and UTIL*eyes, for years. We've always found Eyelit to be very flexible and responsive to our needs. Under new ownership and direction, we were looking for strategic vendor partnerships. Eyelit has always been very easy to work with, which was not the case with our previous MES supplier," he added.

"No company wants to replace its MES software in a running factory and we usually recommend more than eight weeks for a migration, but there were time constraints. In performing a manual deployment of the MES, we felt we could meet the deadline. Many semiconductor manufacturers believe it costs millions of dollars to replace their legacy MES systems.