The Newport Corporation, headquartered in Irvine, California, is one of ITresources' newest clients. The company has 9 international subsidiaries and 24 sales offices worldwide.

Founded in 1969 as the Newport Research Corporation, the company's first products were innovative steel-clad, honeycomb core tables designed to isolate laser experiments from vibration.

Newport continued to expand its products to meet the new needs of scientists and engineers, and in 1971, the company began distributing products through the Newport Catalog. This catalog is still recognized as the foremost sourcebook for precision electro-optic and opto-mechanical products.

In 1991, Newport began a series of acquisitions, and in early 2000, Newport Corporation acquired Kensington Laboratories, headquartered in Richmond, California. Newport Kensington develops and manufactures advanced motion control and robotic systems, which are used for optical fiber alignment and semiconductor wafer handling.

The opportunity arose for ITresources to assist Newport Corporation with a software evaluation and recommendation. Newport Corporation runs MAPICS ERP software at its corporate headquarters and at many of its acquired plants. When Kensington Laboratories came on board, a few MAPICS modules were implemented at Kensington, but a home-grown system is being used to support the Newport Kensington manufacturing processes.

ITresources utilized its proven methodology to conduct client interviews at the Newport Kensington site, develop a weighted list of functional requirements and evaluated several potential software solutions. The information gathered from this process was used to develop the final recommendations which were presented to Newport Corporation.

ITresources will be assisting Newport Corporation with the next phase of the project which is to re-implement the MAPICS software at Newport Kensington and customize the installation to better support their made-to-order manufacturing processes.