IBM Case Studies Leading chemicals manufacturer boosts business performance with IBM and SAP

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	Leading chemicals manufacturer boosts business performance with IBM and SAP IBM

Leading chemicals manufacturer boosts business performance with IBM and SAP

IBM

Technology Category	Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Database Management & Storage Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
Applicable Industries	Chemicals
Applicable Functions	Business Operation Discrete Manufacturing
Use Cases	Manufacturing System Automation Predictive Maintenance
Services	Software Design & Engineering Services System Integration
Challenge	The leading chemicals manufacturer was facing challenges in gaining fast insight required to boost business performance and profitability due to staff and systems spread across many different business units. The company was also experiencing availability problems, often having to take the system offline for software upgrades, back-ups and patches. The company's SAP application user base was expected to grow by several thousand users due to internal reorganization, making capturing operational insights even more difficult. The company recognized the need to reduce downtime, and ensure high availability and reliability for users, and looked for a stable platform it could rely on to keep operations running smoothly around the clock. Read More
About Customer	The leading chemicals manufacturer produces and supplies paints, coatings and specialty chemicals to a wide range of industries and consumers around the world. The company serves customers all over the globe, who have come to expect high quality and value. To meet such high expectations, the company must ensure that every link in its operational chain runs as efficiently as possible. However, with staff and systems spread across many different business units, it was often a challenge to gain the fast insight required to boost business performance and profitability. Read More
Solution	To cut complexity, the leading chemicals manufacturer chose to consolidate all of its SAP instances to a single, central solution. The company ran a rigorous evaluation of potential solutions, ranking them according to the company’s specific requirements on reliability, performance, and cost. The company chose IBM Power Systems running IBM AIX to support DB2. IBM AIX software can run a whole year with only a few updates, enabling the company to keep the database and business processes running with far less scheduled downtime. Sourcing the database, operating system and hardware from a single vendor greatly simplified system management. With a single SAP ERP instance running on IBM DB2, the company has gained a high-performance, highly scalable and reliable centralized solution. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Database Management & Storage

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing

Applicable Industries

Chemicals

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Discrete Manufacturing

Use Cases

Manufacturing System Automation

Predictive Maintenance

Services

Software Design & Engineering Services

System Integration

Challenge

The leading chemicals manufacturer was facing challenges in gaining fast insight required to boost business performance and profitability due to staff and systems spread across many different business units. The company was also experiencing availability problems, often having to take the system offline for software upgrades, back-ups and patches. The company's SAP application user base was expected to grow by several thousand users due to internal reorganization, making capturing operational insights even more difficult. The company recognized the need to reduce downtime, and ensure high availability and reliability for users, and looked for a stable platform it could rely on to keep operations running smoothly around the clock.

About Customer

The leading chemicals manufacturer produces and supplies paints, coatings and specialty chemicals to a wide range of industries and consumers around the world. The company serves customers all over the globe, who have come to expect high quality and value. To meet such high expectations, the company must ensure that every link in its operational chain runs as efficiently as possible. However, with staff and systems spread across many different business units, it was often a challenge to gain the fast insight required to boost business performance and profitability.

Solution

To cut complexity, the leading chemicals manufacturer chose to consolidate all of its SAP instances to a single, central solution. The company ran a rigorous evaluation of potential solutions, ranking them according to the company’s specific requirements on reliability, performance, and cost. The company chose IBM Power Systems running IBM AIX to support DB2. IBM AIX software can run a whole year with only a few updates, enabling the company to keep the database and business processes running with far less scheduled downtime. Sourcing the database, operating system and hardware from a single vendor greatly simplified system management. With a single SAP ERP instance running on IBM DB2, the company has gained a high-performance, highly scalable and reliable centralized solution.

Impact #1	The company now has full copies of its production environment for test and development.
Impact #2	The IBM solutions help to ensure that the manufacturer is better able to stay ahead of its competitors.
Impact #3	The company benefits from a unified overview of operations, which enables a deeper, more comprehensive insight into business processes than ever before.

Impact #1

The company now has full copies of its production environment for test and development.

Impact #2

The IBM solutions help to ensure that the manufacturer is better able to stay ahead of its competitors.

Impact #3

The company benefits from a unified overview of operations, which enables a deeper, more comprehensive insight into business processes than ever before.

Benefit #1	50% lower total cost of ownership
Benefit #2	10x faster report generation enables rapid insight into operations
Benefit #3	44% faster response times streamline workflows

Benefit #1

50% lower total cost of ownership

Benefit #2

10x faster report generation enables rapid insight into operations

Benefit #3

44% faster response times streamline workflows

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Overview

Leading chemicals manufacturer boosts business performance with IBM and SAP

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit