IBM > Case Studies > Iskra Mehanizmi moves into automotive sector with SAP and IBM

Iskra Mehanizmi moves into automotive sector with SAP and IBM

Customer Company Size

Mid-size Company

Region

Europe

Country

Slovenia

Product

SAP R/3 4.6c
IBM System p 570
IBM System Storage DS4300
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Enterprise Resource Planning
IBM Lotus Notes and Domino

Tech Stack

IBM AIX
IBM DB2

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Productivity Improvements
Cost Savings

Technology Category

Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Database Management & Storage
Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration

Applicable Industries

Automotive

Applicable Functions

Discrete Manufacturing
Procurement

Use Cases

Manufacturing System Automation
Supply Chain Visibility

Services

System Integration

About The Customer

Iskra Mehanizmi is a manufacturer of a wide range of electromechanical products. The company operates from two sites in Slovenia and has recently opened a new plant in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The company employs around 500 people and has been in business for over 50 years. Initially, Iskra Mehanizmi started as a manufacturer of electromechanical counters, which still form an important part of its business. However, with changing market conditions, Iskra Mehanizmi made a strategic decision to diversify its product set, and began to produce household appliances under license for consumer electronics giant Phillips. The company also moved into the automotive sector, providing precision components for a number of major European manufacturers.

The Challenge

Iskra Mehanizmi, a manufacturer of electromechanical products, sought to diversify its product range by moving into the automotive sector. This strategic decision led to an increasingly complex supply chain, which the company’s legacy information systems were struggling to manage. The company's transition from specializing in one particular range of products to being involved in three quite different industry sectors complicated their extended supply chain. Their in-house IT system, running on an Oracle database platform and HP servers, was not equipped to handle the processes required by the company’s new business ventures. Extending this solution would have meant considerable development work, prompting the IT department to look for a new solution.

The Solution

Iskra Mehanizmi implemented ERP software from SAP with the help of IBM. As the environment grew, the company migrated to the IBM System p platform, using an IBM DB2 database and deploying a SAN using IBM System Storage DS4300 hardware and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager. The SAP applications are also integrated with the company’s IBM Lotus Domino document management system. The company’s current environment has the SAP applications running in three logical partitions (LPARs) on a single IBM System p 570 server. The IT department has also migrated the data in its ERP environment from Microsoft SQL Server to IBM DB2. Iskra Mehanizmi has implemented a storage area network (SAN) based on an IBM System Storage DS4300 disk system. The company has also deployed IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Enterprise Resource Planning (TSM for ERP), which is highly integrated with the SAP applications and enables simple management of the tiered storage environment.

Operational Impact

Single central SAP application environment can handle complex business processes for all Iskra Mehanizmi’s manufacturing divisions, minimizing administrative workload and improving financial management.
Virtualized System p hardware provides excellent reliability and a 90 per cent reduction in SAP application response times.
System p is easy to manage, cutting IT department workload by 20 per cent.

Quantitative Benefit