Manufacturer Achieves Quality IT Performance at Plants with NETSCOUT

The company’s distributed, worldwide factories are critical to achieving overall production quotas, and they must perform as well as the main manufacturing facilities. Not surprisingly, the distributed plants rely heavily on IT technology, such as automated assembly lines that communicate instructions and status between equipment on the lines. In addition, not all the company’s remote facilities use centralized IT services; rather, they use locally hosted applications. These remote facilities are run on a “network in a box,” where VMware ESX servers are used to host manufacturing / production applications that are responsible for bar code scanning, printing, and communications as well as underlying network protocols like DNS, file services, and LDAP. These applications are critical to operating the production line and business processes at the plants. When communication between machines slows or stops, the symptoms may not be quickly apparent locally and can persist for a few hours, leading to delays on the lines, halting the lines completely, or creating issues requiring rework.

This large North American manufacturer builds and sells household appliances, electric motors, lighting products, and many other electrical products for household, commercial, and industrial applications. From small to large appliances for the kitchen and laundry room to commercial HVAC systems, this manufacturer has become a staple in homes and businesses around the world. Their other products range from state-of-the-art light bulbs and specialized lighting solutions, to household and industrial motors and generators. With dozens of factories and R&D facilities worldwide, as well as, point-of-sale ordering capabilities throughout stores in multiple large retail chains, IT service performance is critical.