American Suzuki

American Suzuki Motor Corporation Selects UC4 For Enhanced Job Scheduling

"By not having to otherwise address our 'Midnight Problem' we have saved many man-hours in recovery as well as time lost running jobs manually. American Suzuki is saving approximately US$1,000 each week with the UC4 software. This number does not even take into consideration errors indirectly caused by humans when our old scheduler stopped working. In the past, we had one to two problems a week, and so far with the UC4 platform, we have been problem-free."
Phil Carey, Operations Manager for American Suzuki

Customer Snapshot
Company: American Suzuki Motor Corporation (ASMC)
Business/Industry: Automotive, Manufacturing
Corporate Headquarters: Brea, California, USA
Webpage: www.suzuki.com
Technical Environment: AS/400 (V5.2.0 and V5.3.0), Win2000-2003 server, NT and Linux

The Company
The Automotive Operations of American Suzuki Motor Corporation (ASMC) was founded in 1985 by parent company Suzuki Motor Corporation (SMC) and currently markets its vehicles in the United States through a network of more than 520 automotive dealerships in 49 states. Founded in 1909 and incorporated in 1920, SMC has operations in 125 countries. Based in Hamamatsu, Japan, SMC is a diversified worldwide automobile, motorcycle and outboard motor manufacturer.

The Challenge
American Suzuki works with its extensive dealership network to deliver more than two million new vehicles each year. With this production volume, numerous customers, and various technology ties, the streamlined processing of critical data for vehicle parts, customer orders, and general business applications is imperative.

American Suzuki sought an enterprise job scheduling and data automation tool that would meet the ongoing needs of the company's growing distributed computing environment.

For years, American Suzuki worked with a legacy scheduler on its AS/400 system. However this software fell short in meeting the cross-platform and cross-application needs imperative for an organization such as American Suzuki. The company required a job scheduler that was not only scalable and flexible enough to work with all current and future operating systems and applications, but also one that had advanced technical automation capabilities.

The former scheduler was limited in that it would only run on American Suzuki's AS/400 operating system. With its diverse production environment, American Suzuki's IT operations needed to ensure that all job scheduling processes would be automated regardless if the files came in through the AS/400, Windows, or from any other platform. With its current scheduler's platform limitations, the file transfer activities and job scheduling functionality had to be maintained on separate platforms, creating inefficiencies and job plan interferences in the system. American Suzuki needed an enterprise wide job scheduler that would automate the process of having its data move between any number of platforms with full file transfer functionality.

In order to measure up to their internal technical requirements and to avoid losing valuable time, money, and resources, American Suzuki sought out for a new job scheduling solution. Essential criteria for the new job scheduler was to have time-driven, as well as event-driven processing functionality in addition to having flexibility in setting job parameters to ensure reliable completion of time-critical processes.

For example, American Suzuki had a job which would not carry over from one day to the next. If this job experienced an issue in the evening, it would stop running at midnight, and would not restart because the system did not recognize the same job for the new day. As a result, the job had to be run manually the following day, sapping precious man-hours, in order to get the system back on track. This problem was such an issue it earned the nickname the 'Midnight Problem'.  

Beyond the 'Midnight Problem', this time-driven process was an ongoing issue making it necessary for American Suzuki to continually re-run jobs or run jobs manually for daily and monthly reporting, adding unnecessary steps and duplicating processes.

American Suzuki began to search for a centralized enterprise job scheduler to handle multiple platforms and applications while solving the technical issues it was having with the previous scheduler. It was important that the new scheduler have optimal technical capabilities and could run on AS/400 as well as Win2000-2003 server, NT, and Linux and would accommodate any future growth in the company's IT environment.

The Solution
American Suzuki's IT team researched and evaluated a number of job scheduling options to meet the company's requirements. Evaluation of each software package involved testing and evaluating a fully loaded system – not just a small test sample. American Suzuki wanted to ensure that that the solution they chose was the one that would fully deliver on its claims. While some job schedulers were eliminated right away for not providing cross-platform capabilities, other options which looked promising at first glance were eliminated for not being able to function when evaluated in the fully loaded test environment. This process narrowed the options to one company that passed the test in all ways. American Suzuki selected the UC4 platform.

Implementation of the UC4 platform took two months and American Suzuki has been pleased with the functionality, scalability and flexibility that the software brings to the company's IT operations. The UC4 platform offers the most advanced functionality for time-driven as well as event-driven processes. The software enables the automatic scheduling of jobs in direct response to specific events that occur within the enterprise and can run multiple days worth of jobs at once, or a portion of jobs on the next day.

The UC4 platform ultimately streamlined American Suzuki's job processing by archiving, compressing, encrypting, and sending outgoing files, then monitoring them to make sure they go through. If any issues are experienced, the UC4 platform automatically flags the transmission and resolves those issues, offering truly event-driven job scheduling. American Suzuki currently has nine executors up and running and has plans to add more.

The software also monitors for incoming messages. When they arrive, the UC4 platform decrypts and decompresses them, then enters them into the workflow and/or archives them as needed. Jobs run through the system automatically, creating files which are delivered directly to the appropriate destination.

"My advice to anyone looking for a job-scheduling tool would be to evaluate each one thoroughly with a full test implementation", said Phil Carey, operations manager for American Suzuki. "With the exception of the UC4 platform, all the other options we tested looked good up front but failed in a full implementation environment. The UC4 platform delivered exactly what it promised and we have been very pleased with our selection."

UC4 Benefits
"The UC4 platform is a very stable product that allows job control over multiple platforms with easy-to-use monitoring tools that can be administered from one location or many", Carey said.

American Suzuki is currently processing more than 5,000 jobs a week and is confident that it has found a job scheduling solution that works for the company. With the UC4 platform, the company found a scheduler that runs on all current and planned future operating systems, has seamless integration with other programs and applications, and incorporates the functionality and technical capabilities required to accommodate issues like the 'Midnight Problem'. American Suzuki has estimated a savings of US$1,000 each week with the UC4 platform, not including the extensive time savings.
 
American Suzuki has experienced a solid return on its investment with the UC4 platform. For instance, under an extreme situation shortly after implementing the UC4 platform, American Suzuki's entire system went down stopping all jobs instantaneously. Within minutes, the UC4 platform allowed American Suzuki figure out where all jobs had stopped and from where the system needed to restart. Under the previous scheduler, it would have taken many man-hours to determine the same information. The time saved with the UC4 platform has been immeasurable.

American Suzuki has not only seen the value of UC4's dynamic scheduling product the UC4 platform, but they have also experienced and taken advantage of features embedded in the product such as the advanced scripting functionality, which allows them to take the functionality beyond job scheduling. With scripting, the options are virtually limitless for what American Suzuki can request from its system, such as programming parameters for before and after jobs, deleting files, date stamp from the system, or renaming files.

Success Factors

• American Suzuki is saving an estimated $1,000 minimum each week with UC4 software.
• UC4 eliminated the 'Midnight Problem'. Regardless of what happens within the system, if jobs from the previous day are incomplete, those scheduled for the next day are not held up.  
• UC4 eliminated job plan interference through technically superior cross-platform and application capabilities. 
• UC4  offers the most advanced functionality for time-driven as well as event-driven processes enabling virtually limitless flexibility.
• American Suzuki has eliminated the need to rerun or run jobs manually –saving time and resources for the company.