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Located in two manufacturing facilities just outside Burlington, Vt., Fab-Tech, Inc., has evolved from a traditional job-shop metal forming company to the leading global supplier of corrosive-resistant fume exhaust systems.

Early in the 1990s Fab-Tech partnered with IBM and DuPont to replace fume exhaust ducts in one of IBM's semiconductor facilities. Since semiconductor manufacturing involves highly corrosive, toxic and potentially combustible fumes and fluids, Fab-Tech in collaboration with DuPont, developed a solution to reduce the corrosive effects of these agents on fume exhaust ducts. The process integrally bonds a highly chemical-resistant material, Teflon® ETFE, onto stainless steel. The result of this collaboration is Perma Shield Pipe (PSP®) that combines Fab-Tech's metal-fabrication and proprietary powder coating capabilities with DuPont's Teflon® primer technology.

Fab-Tech grew rapidly during the 1990s following the explosive demand for semiconductors. Much of the homegrown technology developed by Fab-Tech's founder quickly became inadequate as the company grew and its business processes became more complex. According to Paul Frascola, senior VP of finance and operations for Fab-Tech, "The systems were a bunch of dBase programs written for specific applications. They didn't talk to each other, so there was a lack of control and a lot of opportunity for human error."

By July 2000 Fab-Tech was sold and the new owners had identified the need for a comprehensive ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) implementation in the early due diligence stages. This realization was ranked among the most important initiatives for the new owners.

Fab-Tech's search for a new system started with an independent consultant identifying potential suppliers. The challenge was significant because Frascola noted, "There are a lot of traditional make-to-stock systems out there. While we (Fab-Tech) do have some stock units, eighty percent of our business is engineer-to-order. We needed ERP software that could handle out engineer-to-order (ETO) requirements and be flexible enough to deal with our hybrid needs."