NewsForge: Manufacturer Turns to Open ERP Software to Run Business

“Moline Bearing manufactures and sells metal bearings from its
factory in St. Charles, Ill., and its warehouses in Mississippi,
Texas, Colorado, and California. Owner David Fauntleroy has
discovered that when it comes to the enterprise resource planning
(ERP) software that keeps his business running smoothly, the open
source philosophy works better.

“Fauntleroy isn’t just the owner; he is the sole IT person at
Moline. The lone server in use runs Tiger, the latest release of
Mac OS X. Until last year, Fauntleroy was using a proprietary
database called 4D on top of OS X to keep track of inventory,
shipping, customer accounts, and work flow. He started running into
problems with stability and flexibility. ‘I don’t know what they
did to it–I was having to back up every hour [because of frequent
crashes]…'”

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