Download PDF
SUCCESS STORY: MoldRite Plastics
Technology Category
- Networks & Connectivity - Ethernet
Applicable Industries
- Plastics
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
MoldRite Plastics, a plastic-cap manufacturer, was facing challenges in integrating networks, applications, and users from two recent acquisitions. The performance of their Storage Area Network (SAN) and multiple applications was not meeting their needs. The company was also transitioning to Gigabit Ethernet, but the budget for upgrading from Fast Ethernet was extremely limited. The IT department was aware that Gigabit Ethernet would solve their current problems and support the company’s future plans for new applications. However, they were facing issues with switch saturation causing speed problems for users, and they anticipated that 1 Gigabit Ethernet and possibly 10 Gigabit Ethernet would be necessary for upcoming projects.
About The Customer
MoldRite Plastics is a manufacturer of plastic caps, primarily resold to pharmaceutical companies as containers for over-the-counter pills such as aspirin. The company is based in upstate New York and has recently made two acquisitions, integrating their networks, applications, and users into their existing infrastructure. The company has approximately 300 wireless clients and 600 wired clients, and is constantly developing new applications and services. MoldRite was facing challenges with their existing Fast Ethernet infrastructure, which was aging and not meeting their needs in terms of performance. They were also on a tight budget for upgrading their network to Gigabit Ethernet.
The Solution
MoldRite replaced its aging Fast Ethernet infrastructure with Gigabit Ethernet solutions from Brocade. The network serves approximately 300 wireless clients and 600 wired clients, and new applications and services are always under development. At the network core and at the access and aggregation points, Brocade ICX switches deliver exceptional performance, scalability, and reliability. With the Brocade Gigabit Ethernet network, the number of hanging transfers has dropped to zero. Switches are at only 5 percent of CPU and memory utilization, and overall link utilization is down significantly from the Fast Ethernet past. Since deploying Gigabit Ethernet, troubleshooting the improved network requires much fewer resources. The SAN supports faster transfers and is highly reliable, scalable, and manageable. With the mergers underway, the company is easily handling service integration and resource sharing.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
Plastic Spoons Case study: Injection Moulding
In order to meet customer expectations by supplying a wide variety of packaging units, from 36 to 1000 spoons per package, a new production and packaging line needed to be built. DeSter wanted to achieve higher production capacity, lower cycle time and a high degree of operator friendliness with this new production line.
Case Study
Boiler Control System for Plastic Manufacturing Applications
Factory automation applications must be equipped to handle and monitor the myriads of information from attached devices. For plastic manufacturing applications, the boiler control system plays a critical role by gathering and regulating information to ensure production is accurate and smooth. In this particular case, the customer combines eight subsystems that include power meters, water meters, alarm output, displays, and I/O status to be controlled by several intelligent controllers with Modbus RTU interface. The Modbus TCP protocol is used for this application due to the distance. System Requirements: • Modbus serial to Modbus TCP translation • Multiple slaves/masters support • Automatic Modbus TCP response time detection
Case Study
Ascend Performance Materials Case Study
Ascend operations must access multiple software systems to manage day-to-day operations in an effective and secure manner. These systems generate large sets of data which contain critical information pertaining to management systems, planning and cost information in business systems and energy consumption. As a result, Ascend management was challenged with creating relevant reports reflecting performance measures in overall context of their operational process. The company’s previous process entailed collecting and analyzing data manually which was not effective, since the information collected was generated after the fact, and was too complex for collaborative use across the organization.
Case Study
Remake Enterprise-to-production System
The client was running a legacy material flow tracking system and wanted to replace the system with a more effective one as the system was increasingly expensive to maintain and support and also was not extendable. The client's IT landscape was filled with modern applications and it was difficult to interface the material flow tracking system with modern applications.
