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Marcegaglia case study
Marco Campi, IT Director of Marcegaglia S.p.A., explains how the Italian industrial group and world leader in steel processing has identified IBM as the ideal technological partner to embark on a path of digital transformation and contribute to the growth of its business in a constantly evolving scenario.
Marcegaglia is a company that is facing many challenges in the energy sector, which is why sustainability is one of its main objectives.
In this context, technology can make a significant contribution, allowing us to analyze the vast amounts of data available and identify ways to minimize energy consumption by adopting various counter-measures.
Also with regard to the energy impact of the IT solutions adopted, consolidating multiple systems on IBM Power machines is a particularly cost-effective choice. Thanks to its efficiency, this platform significantly reduces the energy cost per transaction compared to other solutions.
The Marcegaglia group relies mainly on an on-premise infrastructure, while using the cloud in software-as-a-service mode for applications that require specific skills and IT security services for which it generally relies on third parties. In the past two years, the software used has increased and become more pervasive, and with smart working, collaboration has become increasingly important.
The core application supporting the business is represented by SAP HANA, and recently the client felt the need to renew this technological infrastructure at the base of the ERP. This involved designing a hardware, software and middleware architecture capable of guaranteeing business continuity and performance levels appropriate to the criticality of the services provided and support and security for its production and logistics chain.
After a careful feasibility analysis produced by IBM in collaboration with a business partner, a technical and economic benchmark was carried out, which led to the identification of the IBM Power platform as the best compared to the need to support the SAP HANA system used by Marcegaglia globally.
A solution has been chosen that can provide constant support over time, rather than greater flexibility. IBM, together with the partner ecosystem, has provided for the integration and production of related systems and operating environments, ensuring a solid and reliable technological infrastructure.
The solution is based on a cluster of systems that combines the logic of replicating SAP applications with the ability to move workloads from one system to another without duplicating resources, with obvious benefits on overall TCO.
Two IBM Power E950 systems with Linux operating system for managing SAP Hana logical partitions and Virtual I/O servers for etwork resource virtualization. IBM Power HMC (Hardware Management Console) for solution monitoring, predictive diagnostics and the possible need to rebalance processor and memory resources in "on-demand" mode.
After this implementation, a 20-30% increase in transaction execution speed was observed, without overloading the machine. This allows, when needed, a reserve of processing capacity to be available for use.
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The global pandemic imposed clear limitations, changing operational methods, restricting travel, and increasing the management complexity of many supply chains, highlighting the importance of the IT infrastructure, which is a crucial node for the management, communication, and operation of sites and employees worldwide. In addition, the rise in cyber security risks in supply chains have become increasingly common, particularly due to smartworking and recent geopolitical crises.
The future goal is definitely to standardize the applications in the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) applications as much as possible, in order to have more manageable, less expensive and safer situations. It will also be crucial to devise a data warehouse for operations that, thanks to integration with AI and machine learning algorithms, will help us understand where we perform best and identify the areas for improvement that require investment. This strategy is already in place for the commercial side, and we aim to adopt it in the production phase to enhance quality across all our sites.
Finally, we will aim to integrate more and more digital and automated tools into the production chain, as we are doing with continuous digital printing on coils, in order to align ourselves with a market trend that increasingly aims to customize products.
The Marcegaglia Group is an Italian multinational company that is a world leader in the steel processing sector. With over 15,000 clients in Europe and around the world, the group’s market strength is clearly demonstrated.
Technological innovation is, for the group, the tool to optimize the flow of goods, increase efficiency, worker safety and optimize the value chain.
Since 2020, the Mercegaglia Group, although not required to prepare a non-financial statement, has decided, as part of a strategic path to becoming a sustainable business model, to publish its Sustainability Report, increasingly strengthening the positive impact on employees, the community and the environment
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