Dätwyler
Dätwyler Combines UC4, SAP and FlexFrame to Achieve a High Degree of Flexibility
"We decided on a combination of UC4®, SAP® and FlexFrame to achieve a high degree of flexibility and decrease the total cost of ownership."
Ivo Tresch IT Manager, Dätwyler
Customer Snapshot
Company: Dätwyler Group
Business/Industry: Supplier and distributor of technical and electronic components
Company Headquarters: Altdorf, Uri (Canton), Switzerland
Presence: international
Webpage: www.daetwyler.ch
Technical Environment: Windows NT®, Linux®, BS2000, Oracle8 V9i, SAP R/3®, (quality assurance, customizing and production), SAP BW® customizing and production, FlexFrame® for mySAP®
The Company
The Dätwyler Group is an international, multi-niche player that supplies and distributes technical and electronic components. The Swiss company's five divisions service its core markets: automotive, telecom, pharmaceuticals as well as industry and construction. In 2005, the Group with approx. 4,600 employees earned over CHF 1 billion (US$ 0.8 billion) in revenue.
The Challenge
As with most large companies, a heterogeneous IT system landscape has emerged over the years for Dätwyler Cables+Systems and Dätwyler Rubber. When integrating systems, this has resulted in regular problems for data synchronisation, comprehensive evaluations and data security. In the past, batch procedures were developed manually which affected both open systems as well as classic mainframe applications and were monitored by operating and system specialists. This resulted in high personnel costs and difficult control procedures. The solution: the introduction of enterprise scheduling software from UC4.
"In the end, all production areas at Dätwyler are affected either directly or indirectly by the proper implementation of batch processing", says Ivo Tresch, IT Manager at Dätwyler regarding the significance of the right scheduling software. "The availability of correct warehouse data, prices, and invoicing details is critical to the company because without it you have no information about product availabilities. In addition, all statistical evaluations are based on this data."
Dätwyler decided to change its hardware architecture two years after introducing scheduling software. "The most important reason for the conversion was the desire for more flexibility, easier upgradeability and lower operating costs", explains Tresch. The company decided to switch from the existing cluster to FlexFrame for mySAP, an infrastructure solution from Fujitsu Siemens Computers for the Dynamic Data Center (DDC). Using FlexFrame, hardware resources can be assigned dynamically to different SAP applications – there is no fixed of hardware to application. This dynamic infrastructure requires the corresponding flexibility of the Job Scheduler. "UC4 enables you to manage applications within the dynamic FlexFrame environment. Thus we were able to apply the existing production processes without changes." Fujitsu Siemens Computers and UC4 Software laid the corresponding groundwork within the framework of a strategic partnership.
The Solution
The decision was made in 2002 to implement a cross-platform job scheduling system. When looking for the right solution, only the scheduler from UC4 Software proved itself after an intense evaluation process to be the right solution for the systems in place. The UC4 platform now manages several Linux and Windows servers along with processes in SAP applications. Another important task for the Job Scheduler is the exchange of data between the Windows environment and the BS2000 mainframe system from Fujitsu Siemens Computers, which runs in-house-developed production planning and control applications.
Naturally, security and reliability also play an important role for scheduling: "All data exchange processes are logged and monitored automatically thanks to UC4's audit trail features," explains Rolf Walker, responsible for SAP administration at Dätwyler. Because of its simple control mechanisms, jobs can run around the clock unguarded. When problems occur, administrators are simply informed by text messages (SMS). "The time advantages of the automatic scheduler are immense", says Walker.
The UC4 platform can really show what it can do when using the FlexFrame concept specially designed for SAP applications. This concept separates business processes from the infrastructure and thus is able to flexibly assign computer resources to applications. "You used to have to remove the machine and replace it with a more powerful one to give users better performance. Now through 'virtualisation' processes are relocated dynamically without reducing availability", explains Walker. As pilot users, the IT team at Dätwyler gained great respect for this due to the mammoth task involved in converting the hardware infrastructure and Job Scheduler simultaneously. "We were pleasantly surprised that the integration with the UC4 platform went so smoothly", says Walker.
UC4 Benefits
- Universal integration of all platforms including BS2000
- Smooth integration of FlexFrame for mySAP thus decreasing total costs (TCO)
- Automatic and audit-secure documentation of business-critical processes
- Cross-platform implementation
- Significant cost savings by increasing availability
- Simple administration and maintenance (drag & drop, text message alerts)
