The following is an excerpt from "Having the Vision: START-IT’s 2006 CEO VISIONARIES". To view the article in its entirely, please visit: http://www.specialtypub.com/article.asp?article_id=3272

Scott Toney
President and CEO
Camstar

A theme among many of the executives named to this years’ list of CEO Visionaries is focus. Every executive makes important decisions and then lives by them the best they can, but without a clear focus those decisions may not get executed correctly or at all.

MES (manufacturing execution systems) has quickly become a strategic application to help global manufacturers deliver perfect manufacturing orders on time, first time. Scott Toney, Camstar’s president and CEO, is all about focus for the company’s MES application. His is a targeted approach, which is working quite well for the company whose revenues are growing by more than 50% a year.

Camstar’s key vertical target markets are medical device and diagnostics, semiconductor, and high-tech electronics. Camstar has customers in other industries, but it is on these three that Toney focuses much of his attention, with the most recent successes in the medical device vertical.

Where ERP systems are probably the most well known type of business application that manufacturers use, MES connects the valuable information in manufacturing to the rest of the enterprise

The semiconductor industry was the among the first to see the benefits of MES because of its tracking and tracing capabilities and its ability to give detailed feedback on what is happening while products are being made. This has always been a critical method to improve production yields and efficiency in an environment where product costs and production overhead are high. Paper doesn’t offer the real-time control, nor a feasible method to find trends and correlations when problems arise.

"Semiconductor manufacturers were early adopters because their processes are so volatile and their technologies so new. They knew the ROI (return on investment) and the value of dependable processes from the start. Medical device companies are just now learning the value of MES. They have similar challenges, yet it’s one of the toughest environments I’ve seen because of the addition of strict regulations. They are required to have traceability and signatures on everything, and with paper processes, it’s a huge burden. Our customers have been able to eliminate that paperwork burden, and dramatically improve quality and efficiency, and also reduce risk."

Though Toney focused Camstar on medical device manufacturers just two years ago, the company is already deploying its solution in half of the 12 biggest medical device companies in the world.

For a company like Camstar, partnering with the customer, technology providers, and others is extremely important to meet customer expectations, especially when it comes to quick implementations and increasing production yields, driving up throughput with fewer errors, and meeting government compliance requirements.

Camstar is rapidly scaling its strategic partner network to meet increasing global demand. Through partners, Camstar can deliver the reliable, quick response its customer deserves.

"They want results, and we can help them through our partners who understand our product and embrace our methodology," says Toney.

Toney's  leadership has created a company culture that embraces customer service as a way of life. The company even has a name for its approach to listening to customers, called the "Voice of the Customer."  This process involves Toney and others meeting with customers in different verticals to understand their challenges, which is then incorporated into Camstar’s strategic development process. New software releases are already a result of these meetings, and another was due in April.

"Our focus now is to raise the bar with more functionality. We have a roadmap for next three years. It's starting to pay off," he says.