Skoda

Škoda's Cost/Benefit Analysis Awards UC4 a Very High Grade

"By changing to the new UC4 automation solution, we have finally been able to get rid of the problems caused by having several different schedulers."
Jan Tomsik, Information and Communication Department, Technological Services Škoda

Customer Snapshot 
Company: Škoda
Business/Industry: automobile manufacturer
Company Headquarters: Mladá Boleslav, Czech Republic
Presence: global
Webpage: www.skoda-auto.de, www.skoda-auto.cz
Technical Environment: mainframe, Windows 2000, Unix, several mySAP and SAP BW systems  

The Company
Škoda Auto has been part of the Volkswagen Group since 1991. In 2003, the company employed about 20,000 people and produced approximately 450,000 vehicles with strong growth expected to continue. The company operates a large number of international production facilities and is characterized by innovative concepts and dedication to safety and comfort. Škoda – simply clever.  

The Challenge
Over the years, Škoda's need to permanently evolve its IT resources has resulted in various, sometimes localized scheduling solutions in order to enable productive operation of a hetergeneous system landscape. Škoda has used the products Jobtrac, Zeke, and Autosys. Unfortunately, this diversity has led to growing problems. For one thing, there have been recurring communication problems between mainframes (which run 33 percent of all jobs) and open platforms. Furthermore, every environment required technicians with specialized technical knowledge. At the same time there was no centralized monitoring solution for the entire complex environment. The wide variety of interfaces caused an increasing number of errors in job-flow management, which negatively affected reliability in the IT productive environment. Errors also occurred in areas that are highly relevant to the company's profitability, such as the warehouse, replacement parts orders, and SAP reporting. It was the customer's perception that the suppliers were providing inadequately qualified support and had costly licensing policies, that finally prompted them to seek out a new solution.  

Additional requirements of the new centralized solution included certifications for mySAP (Basis 4.7) and SAP Business Information Warehouse (BW) as well as a connection to SNMP and Tivoli Enterprise Console as a monitoring tool. 
The IT productive environment affects primarily business-critical processes. For this reason, the solution had to exhibit both high availability as well as secure file transfer capabilities. The previously used FTP did not permit professional monitoring and therefore did not satisfy the current security requirements. Finally, the new scheduler was required to perform automatic documentation of all processes, be a well-organized administrative tool providing reliable 24-hour support seven days a week.  

The Solution
Seamless integration of all systems was one of the key requirements for Škoda's new tool, and this is what led them to start evaluating the UC4 platform in partnership with Beta Systems. During the test phase, which lasted just a few weeks, 6,000 jobs were migrated to the UC4 platform parallel to the ongoing daily work. After successful conclusion of the tests, the entire system was converted to productive operation.  

Škoda's cost/benefit analysis awards the UC4 platform a very high grade. Moreover, the company saved significant licensing fees compared to the previous solutions. "However, the main initiator of the project was our desire for 100 percent reliability", according to Jan Tomsik of the Information and Communication Department, Technological Services. "With the UC4 platform, we achieved this goal across all of the system boundaries."  

According to Jan Tomsik, the migration to the new UC4 automation solution resolved all of the problems that emanated from having three different schedulers: "The UC4 platform was implemented rapidly and has been running very stably every since. It has enabled us to greatly increase the availability of all our IT resources. This is true especially for the shipping of replacement parts, an activity that is now completely based on the UC4 platform. Now we can't even imagine enterprise application integration without the UC4 platform."  

The UC4 platform scores points not only with time and event-based automation of jobs across system boundaries, but also with its graphical interface that for the first time permits simple, centralized control. The file transfer system integrated into the UC4 platform performs and monitors all file transfers from start to finish and, when desired, can automatically convert the file into the target system's character set.  

At Škoda Auto, the secure UC4 batch interface connects all of the important systems with each other and forms the foundation of cross-platform communication with encrypted transfer and protection against unauthorized access. Redundant operation of the centralized, high-availability solution gives Škoda additional security.  

UC4 Benefits

• Replaces several schedulers with a centralized solution
• Rapid launch and migration
• Cross-platform deployment
• Significant cost savings
• Increased availability
• Easier administration and maintenance (single point of control)
• Encrypted file transfers with character-set conversion
• Minimization of errors
• Certified for mySAP
• Unlimited possibilities with the UC4 scripting language