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To Infinity and Beyond Aerospace Industry Finds Resilience in the Cloud
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
Applicable Industries
- Aerospace
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
- Procurement
Use Cases
- Supply Chain Visibility
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
UmbraGroup, an Italian manufacturer, is a strategic supplier to aerospace companies globally. The company's clients depend on UmbraGroup’s high-precision mechanical components to keep their aircraft in the air and their machinery running. In today’s operating environment of just-in-time supply chain management, these companies demand a lot from their suppliers. UmbraGroup needed to ensure its resiliency as a key supplier. The importance of resiliency for UmbraGroup took on added urgency as it began acquiring new operations, including two manufacturers in Germany and one in the United States. The company had to ensure the worldwide availability of their systems across multiple time zones, well beyond their headquarters and main datacenter in Foligno. In addition to the usual resiliency challenges, earthquakes are a fact of life in central Italy. UmbraGroup needed to be sure that even an earthquake won’t stop production and shipment to clients.
About The Customer
UmbraGroup is a privately held company headquartered in Foligno, Italy. The company is a strategic supplier to aerospace companies including Boeing, Airbus, British Airways, Lufthansa, KLM, Lockheed Martin, Trumpf and Mori Seiki. These companies depend on UmbraGroup’s high-precision mechanical components to keep their aircraft in the air and their machinery running. The group’s industrial and energy clients also depend on a steady supply of UmbraGroup’s screws, bearings and electromechanical parts. UmbraGroup has operations in Germany and the United States. The company completed a two-year consolidation of the group’s Enterprise Resource Planning system in 2012, combining all four companies under one IT umbrella.
The Solution
UmbraGroup turned to IBM, an internationally recognized IT partner, to ensure its resiliency as a key supplier. IBM was able to take UmbraGroup’s requirements and find the right balance among performance, service levels and costs. IBM’s cloud offering is built in a modular way and has a pay-for-what-you-use pricing. The cloud offering relies on pre-configured hardware and dynamic provisioning to replicate everything to a remote datacenter, so the time to implement is minimal. IBM and UmbraGroup are designing a continuity plan that defines all the procedures and dependencies in operations as well as technology. They are working through every process to make sure that no step is dependent on a single individual. The objective is to have a failover plan that covers all operations in case of emergency—a plan that can reduce dependencies or identify a way to work around them if necessary.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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