Global Packaging Company starts SAP xMII Rollout

by Ed Marshall

World's largest beverage can company banks on the Stratus platform for continuous availability

One of the world's largest packaging companies has chosen Stratus(R) ftServer(R) systems as the hardware platform for a major re-architecture of its plant systems, including the integration of a manufacturing execution system with its enterprise resource planning system, Stratus Technologies announced today.

Rexam, the world's largest manufacturer of beverage cans, will implement a total of 35 Stratus ftServer 2400 and 4300 servers at 17 can and end production facilities in North America. The ftServer systems will be the hardware platform for the SAP(R) xApp Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence (xMII), used to integrate manufacturing transactions with mySAP(TM) ERP, and the Acumence Plant Analytics Server, used to monitor operations and resolve manufacturing exceptions in real time. Having an xMII server at each plant will also allow the plants to run in a disconnected mode in the event of a wide area network (WAN) outage or corporate ERP maintenance. Project integrator Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) recommended Stratus because of its record in supporting critical manufacturing IT infrastructure projects with widely distributed facilities such as Rexam's.

"Solution availability was an essential requirement of this project, and we knew Stratus from their work on major manufacturing execution system (MES) deployments," said Ashtad Engineer, global business manager for SAP Perfect Plant solutions at TCS. "Stratus ftServer systems provided the customer with unparalleled availability and with an operationally simple solution that could be managed with limited IT resources. We thought they'd be a good fit and, after reviewing Stratus' capabilities, Rexam agreed."

Rexam is a $7 billion company with operations in 20 countries. It produces more than 50 billion beverage cans a year, in addition to its other packaging product lines. This project will leverage the beverage can division's investment in SAP applications by integrating ERP and real-time manufacturing data to provide actionable business intelligence. Aggregation of key performance indicators for multi-site plant-to-plant analytics will also be part of the project. The project's primary goals are improving quality and operational efficiency.

"We are taking this step to make sure that transactions are always available at our plants," said John Niemzyk, vice president and CIO, Rexam Beverage Can Company. "This project ensures that all transactions will be stored and later forwarded to the corporate ERP system. We decided the ftServer is the right platform for maintaining this critical link between the corporate instance and our plants."

The Stratus Technologies ftServer family provides companies with cost- effective access to fault-tolerant technology in markets as diverse as manufacturing, telecommunications and financial services. The ftServer family automatically provides zero failover time and critical protection for data in memory as well as on disk in the event of a component failure. The ftServer line is based on industry-standard components and supports the Windows and Linux operating systems. Backed by Stratus' ActiveService remote monitoring and maintenance services, ftServer systems provide uptime in excess of 99.999 percent.

"SAP solution integration is making even short periods of downtime or data loss unacceptable, especially when connecting to real-time manufacturing environments," said Frank Hill, Stratus director of worldwide manufacturing segment. "The certified Stratus ftServer platform eliminates downtime and deploys seamlessly into existing Windows and Linux environments.