Product category:
Manufacturing IT Platforms
News Release from: Lansing Linde | Subject: Enterprise Resoruce Planning (ERP) software
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 15 July 2003
Lansing Linde deploys PRIMERGY
Lansing Linde is part of Linde AG, the world's largest manufacturer of materials handling equipment with annual revenues of approximately 9 billion.
Lansing Linde is part of Linde AG, the world's largest manufacturer of materials handling equipment with annual revenues of approximately ?9 billion The company's wide range of models is backed by an equally comprehensive national network for sales, rental, parts and service
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 17 Feb 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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With almost sixty years experience in the design, manufacture, and support of vehicles in the field, Lansing Linde has built up an enviable customer base throughout the UK.
Linde AG's core enterprise application both in the UK and internationally - is SAP and has been deployed in the UK to support the production plants and National Network Companies (NNCs).
Over time, the response time of the SAP R/3 solution, deployed to support the NNC companies, had slowed down, and Lansing Linde was faced with the challenge of restoring system performance for one of the company's business critical activities.
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After examining the company's broader IT and communications infrastructure, Lansing Linde decided to replace its Intel-based servers.
The company looked closely at the four Intel-based server propositions from the industry's leading server vendors before choosing a PRIMERGY-based solution from Fujitsu Siemens Computers.
"We were initially hoping for a sub-second response for our users, but since installing PRIMERGY servers, we've seen sustainable sub-half a second response times, and that's far more than we expected," said Andreas Schild, IT Director Lansing Linde.
Lansing Linde is one of Europe's largest manufacturers of electric powered industrial trucks and has used SAP's R/2 and R/3 enterprise software to support its business since 1991.
The company originally ran its core SAP R/2-based Quality and Production systems at Basingstoke, Wigan and Merthyr Tydfil on an OS/390 mainframe running DB2.
In addition, Test and Production systems for Lansing Linde's National Network Companies was based on a 3rd party Unix system.
A decision was taken in 1998 to migrate these business critical applications to a client/server environment in order to take advantage of the price/performance and flexibility benefits of such an IT infrastructure approach.
Over the next two years Lansing Linde rolled out its SAP client/server implementation, replacing the National Network Companies' Unix systems, but the company found that the projected benefits of a three-tier client/server architecture were being held up by slow average user response times.
When Andreas Schild joined Lansing Linde in the UK as IT Director, he already had experience of migrating SAP R/3 systems and applications to a client/server environment, and had a good understanding of the kind of performance levels that could be achieved.
"It was clear that our then current IT infrastructure while technically correct did not have the necessary power to deliver the performance our National Network Companies and their customers were expecting," he says.
"This was causing a number of practical difficulties.
For example, we found that we had to ask users to run their key reports between 4pm and 6pm just to make sure overall response times didn't slow down.
At our National Network Companies we also weren't able to answer customer queries immediately and we had to call customers back rather than respond directly.
Clearly this was unacceptable, and we knew we had to assess all aspects of our client/server IT infrastructure.
"We consistently found that our weekly Early Watch Reports from SAP were highlighting performance issues.
So we went away and checked our LAN and our databases, looked at our WAN link to Basingstoke, checked our desktops and made sure they were capable of running as SAP clients with all the necessary PC upgrades.
After checking all our infrastructure we concluded that we needed to replace and upgrade our Intel-based servers." Sub-second response requirement Lansing Linde approached SAP and asked what would be an acceptable user performance response for a client/server R/3 implementation.
SAP recommended 1.2 seconds as an average, but Andreas Schild at Lansing Linde felt that this could be improved on.
"We approached the UK's four leading Intel-based server vendors, let them know we wanted to achieve a sub-second response time, and provided them all with the information they needed to make their proposals," he continued.
"They all came up with similar results, so we then decided on an optimum Intel-based server specification for Lansing Linde and went back to all four vendors.
We then looked at the financial quotations and service capabilities, and finally selected the PRIMERGY Intel-based server solution from Fujitsu Siemens Computers.
Although we had previously worked with one of the other server vendors, we were impressed by Fujitsu Siemens Computers' strong SAP credentials, as well as the performance and reliability of its systems." Lansing Linde adopted a cluster architecture for its Intel-based server infrastructure, with clustered NT servers running Oracle database servers supporting NT-based application servers for both the Quality and Production systems.
The quality systems run on Fujitsu Siemens Computers PRIMERGY N400 compute nodes with four Intel Pentium III Xeon 700 MHz processors, while the NNC Production systems run on PRIMERGY N800 compute nodes, each running eight Intel Pentium III Xeon 900 MHz processors.
The clustered PRIMERGY IT infrastructure ensures that in the unlikely event of failure, a failover mechanism immediately ensures that the parallel PRIMERGY server could take over and keep Lansing Linde's systems running.
Lansing Linde was already successfully using a Hitachi Data Systems HDS7700e SAN storage infrastructure, with approximately two terabytes of memory split half on the SAN and half on Lansing's SAP R/2 mainframe application.
"We were pleased that Fujitsu Siemens Computers would work alongside our existing storage suppliers, as all the other vendors wanted to come in and sell us additional SAN solutions.
In fact during the course of the installation we found Fujitsu Siemens Computers to be very positive, particularly during the important commissioning stage," Schild adds.
Real-world performance improvements "We were careful not to expect too much in terms of response time improvements from our new PRIMERGY servers, particularly as my experience with similar migrations always suggested that when users realise performance is better they simply do more! As a result we were delighted when we found that our user response times had consistently dropped to 0.5 seconds even though our overall workload had increased as people were able to work the system harder." Schild feels the increased system bandwidth enabled by the new PRIMERGY Intel-based servers is bringing some very practical benefits.
"While we previously had to run reports later in the day, users can now produce all the reports they want throughout the day.
We're now producing 100 per cent more reports without any impact on response times at all.
Before implementing the new servers we also found that our helpdesk was inundated by end-user queries typically wondering why response times were slow.
That's no longer an issue for us, even though we now have some 450 users.
"Our National Network Companies have also noticed the difference, with reduced response times meaning they can access the SAP R/3 system during a customer call and provide them with the information they need almost immediately.
Together these benefits amount to real operational improvements, and we've estimated that the implementation of our new PRIMERGY Intel-based servers from Fujitsu Siemens Computers have resulted in an overall 50 per cent plus performance improvement.
What's more, we no longer get any negative performance statement from SAP's Early Watch service," he continues.
Future steps server consolidation One of the by-products of Lansing Linde's migration to a client/server environment is that the company now has over 80 separate servers running different applications based on Microsoft Windows NT/2000, and is clearly an ideal candidate for some form of consolidation initiative.
Consolidation is about simplifying and optimising an organisation's IT infrastructure, and according to Schild: "We're looking carefully at new developments such as Blade Server technology which is starting to get very interesting, particularly in the SAP arena.
We've already spoken to Fujitsu Siemens Computers about the potential for SAP R/3 on blades, and were encouraged by what we saw.
"With blade servers we have the opportunity to reduce our overall server count from around 80 down to some 50 systems, with potentially blade-type servers handling our core R/3 applications allowing us to redeploy our existing PRIMERGY systems to support application services such as Exchange, SMS and Lotus Notes.
Certainly consolidation presents Lansing Linde with interesting opportunities, particularly in the areas of potential cost savings, complexity reduction and overall control and flexibility.
Now that we've succeeded thanks to PRIMERGY - in improving our R/3 user response times by over 50 per cent, we're keen to investigate all areas where we can improve on the value we deliver to the business," concludes Andreas Schild.
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