St. Luke’s University Health Network was facing a challenge of obtaining a single, consolidated view of critical information due to diverse sources of data. This was affecting their clinical, financial, and operational analysis. The organization needed a solution that would allow stakeholders to gain insights across all mastered data domains and cover the full continuum of patient care. The requirements for this BI/EDW initiative included improving clinical quality, reducing costs, improving patient experience, building market share, and fostering success under value-based reimbursement models. The entire team was committed to increasing self-service reporting capabilities for end users and replacing a legacy warehouse and BI system.

Staples Promotional Products was struggling with an inefficient and inconsistent reporting environment. The IT department was constantly writing reports to meet the needs of various departments, using a variety of tools including DB2 reports on the AS/400, Cognos' Impromptu, Microsoft Access databases, Excel data analysis, and Web forms for querying data. The lack of consistency and the time-consuming nature of this process led to the IT department seeking a more efficient solution. They wanted to provide end-user reporting tools to the entire organization, requiring a reporting environment that was accessible to a broad base of users, not just application developers or systems analysts.

State Volunteer Mutual Insurance Company (SVMIC) was seeking to augment its current information resources by empowering its business decision-makers with fresh, data-driven insight. The company wanted to enhance its competitive advantage and financial stability. SVMIC needed to manage its financial solvency to ensure the physicians and group medical practices that depend on their malpractice coverage could continue treating patients with confidence. The company required access to real-time data to get their pricing right, which involved choosing risk carefully and pricing their insurance policies appropriately. This required a deep understanding of their data points and a thoughtful assessment of risks and trends.

Steel Technologies, a steel processor with 24 facilities located throughout the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, needed to carefully track steel as it moves through the supply chain. This was one of the main factors that motivated the company to acquire business intelligence (BI) and integration technology from Information Builders. The company's customers expect to see an accounting of every pound of steel that they process, including scrap. As a $2 billion company, a large portion of Steel Technologies' capital is tied up in inventory. The company uses business intelligence to keep a finger on the pulse of where their inventory stands at any point in time. They use integration technology to load their data mart and simplify their EDI connections. Before the implementation of iWay, Steel Technologies had unique EDI maps for every trading partner. They were maintaining hundreds of maps, which made it difficult to respond in a timely fashion to new business requirements. They had a tremendous backlog of requests to add new trading partners.

Tarleton State University was facing challenges with their previous reporting system. The system was inefficient, requiring the same reports and database queries to be run repeatedly, tying up valuable resources. The problem was further compounded by the time-consuming process of formatting reports in Excel. Some reports, such as semester reports, took up to two weeks to produce, while others, like enrollment, had to be run each day, further burdening the staff. The university was in need of a more comprehensive solution to their reporting needs.

Tata Steel, one of the world's largest steel producers, was facing a challenge in empowering its users with timely, comprehensive information on customer-order and steel-production processes. The data was drawn from various disparate sources including SAP, Oracle, and other systems. The company was following a manufacturing methodology called 'Theory of Constraints' which involved identifying limiting factors standing in the way of achieving production goals, and then systematically improving those constraints until they no longer posed a bottleneck. However, the company needed a way to identify these constraints that affect manufacturing efficiency. Furthermore, the company had many different reporting systems with little standardization, leading to multiple versions of the truth.

Taylor University, a non-denominational Christian liberal arts college, was looking to improve operational and financial performance by gathering data about various campus activities such as recruiting, marketing, fundraising, registration, and institutional research. The university was reliant on student tuition for its institutional budget and as discount rates rise across the industry, operational efficiency was needed to meet bottom-line revenue goals. The admissions department, in particular, faced the challenge of processing an inquiry pool of 50,000 prospective students to fill about 500 enrollment spots. The university needed a predictive analytics tool that would allow them to strategically target inquiries to improve marketing, recruitment, and enrollment.

Thomas Nelson, the world’s largest Christian publisher, was facing challenges in accelerating decision-making and minimizing the burden on IT by helping users become more self-sufficient in addressing their own reporting requirements. The company's information architecture was quite diverse, made up primarily of SQL, DB2, and Oracle systems that recently replaced antiquated mainframe databases. Before the implementation of WebFOCUS, requests for reports could take several weeks to fulfill. Those lagging turnaround times often hindered the usefulness of the data for those who needed it, and created substantial delays in important decision-making activities. With an IT team of only 25 professionals available to address those requests, Thomas Nelson knew it needed to make its end users more self-sufficient.

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) oversees all public postsecondary education in Texas. It works with various entities to provide the citizens of Texas with the widest access to higher education of the highest quality possible. One of the key functions of THECB is to develop, implement, and evaluate a long-range strategic plan for Texas higher education. For example, the THECB’s “Closing the Gaps by 2015” initiative centers on four goals: increasing student participation, increasing student success, expanding institutional excellence, and increasing research expenditures. To reach these and other objectives, THECB needed to increase the efficiency of its staff. At the same time, it needed to improve communication and information sharing with external stakeholders. As THECB was migrating from a mainframe to a server-based environment, the agency turned to Information Builders’ WebFOCUS business intelligence (BI) platform to enhance information management across and beyond the organization.

Toppan Interamerica, a division of Toppan Printing, a $16 billion corporation based in Tokyo, was facing challenges with its reporting processes. The small IT staff was burdened with a steady stream of report requests, and employees often had to wait two days or more to obtain information about sales, accounting, production, and other key business activities. The company was still performing most financial and production reporting manually. The IT staff could barely keep up with the reporting demands of their old systems. They needed to make some changes in their reporting environment if they were to adequately support the information management needs of the business going forward.

Toshiba Personal Computer System Corporation was facing a challenge in delivering real-time information to its management and employees due to the rapid growth of the business. Their existing information system was costly to operate, unstable, and posed security risks. The system was failing to meet the demand for real-time information, which was crucial for timely decision-making. The old system used an Access database for production, sale, and management of accounts. The system didn’t allow for late responses and limits, and only power users could utilize the data. The general user was limited to lists that someone else made. Once a download was made, the user also had to retotal everything in Excel himself. With this system, information could not be timely.

Travel and Transport, one of the largest travel management companies in the world, faced a significant challenge in gaining visibility into employee travel spending. The company lacked a single source of truth for both major travel purchases and incidental expenses. This lack of visibility made it difficult for travel managers to track major purchases such as airfare, car rentals, and hotels, as well as incidental spending on parking, taxis, baggage, meals, Internet charges, and many other items. The company needed a solution that could combine travel management information, credit card data, expense data, and financial/budget information into a big data repository that reveals an entire travel program for a company.

Solebury School, a coed, college preparatory, boarding and day school for 220 students in grades 7-12, was seeking an automation solution for energy management as well as for centralized control, operation, and maintenance of various systems including HVAC. The school approached Vortechs Automation of Huntingdon Valley, PA for the project. The engineers at Vortechs Automation conducted a survey of the campus and were confident they could help Solebury School save on energy costs through the automation of its existing heating and cooling systems. The specific targets were the school’s science and math building, gymnasium, boy’s dormitory, and maintenance facility.

Simsmart, a provider of process systems design software, process performance analysis, process training solutions, and related application engineering, was looking for a solution to enhance its training system. The company wanted to emulate local control panels with control functions, duplicate machinery control system operator pages, and create a multidiscipline process simulation tool and lesson plan management system. The challenge was to create a training environment that closely mimics real-life situations, allowing trainees to be more 'hands-on' while remaining in a secure learning environment. The system also needed to allow instructors to introduce intentional failures into the training scenario and immediately measure trainee response in as realistic a manner as possible.

SIGNATURE S.A., a European leader in road signage and road marking, sought a solution to assist in the automation of its paint plant using a batch process. The company wanted to connect PLCs from different manufacturers to their system, ensure traceability, and enable remote control via production manager and process engineer stations. Additionally, SIGNATURE S.A. wanted to generate daily alarms, event and production data reports, a production report by orders of fabrication (with associated alarms), and a weekly report for total consumption of raw materials used in production.

Scottish Water had a vision to establish an Intelligent Control Centre (ICC) that would allow them to respond in a timely and effective manner to emerging business events to minimise risk and impact on both the customer and Scottish Water. They wanted a solution that would revolutionize the way in which they could understand business events and ensure effective response arrangements for many years to come. The key aims of the ICC were to improve the speed of identification of various business risks that had the potential to impact on the service to their customers, ensure they had the capability to link various sources of business intelligence including telemetry, customer, weather and workflow activity data, etc. to support the early identification and response to, business events and having a system that was flexible enough to both develop and enhance in house to meet future business needs.

ScholleIPN, a global packaging solutions provider, faced challenges in managing its complex and high-output production process across its 14 global sites. The company had hundreds of data islands, with each local site calculating asset performance and quality metrics differently, leading to inconsistencies. The lack of a consistent platform made system improvements unscalable across the globe. The company's Continuous Improvement (CI) Team identified a need to replace the culture of local individualism with global collaboration, while still supporting certain local autonomous needs.

Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, the national airport of The Netherlands, is the 10th biggest airport in the world based on total number of passengers and 14th based on the number of tons of cargo shipped. The airport is built as one large terminal split into three large departure halls, with further expansion planned. The airport needed a robust system to monitor and manage various systems including HVAC, Fire, Security, Lighting, Telephone, and Water Systems. The challenge was to implement a solution that could handle over 300,000 tags, run on multiple PCs, and handle over one million alarms and events per month.

SC «ATS» works with multiple plants in the Russian oil and gas industry. The company was involved in providing control systems in three locations: OAO Surgutneftegaz, with more than 40 objects; NK Rosneft, with more than 20 objects; and TNK BP (Tumenneftegaz), with more than 10 objects. The multiple objects to control at each plant make use of a wide variety of technologies, including radio, GSM/GPRS, Wi-Fi and Ethernet connectivity. In total, there are approximately 16 distributed control stations on area objects and about 118 on telemechanical systems. The types of connected devices include multiple controllers, flowmeters and heater controllers from B&R and Siemens, which are connected to ICONICS HMI/ SCADA interface via OPC servers.

AFV Beltrame S.p.A. was in search of an HMI/ SCADA solution to better visualize and control processes within its multiple plant locations. These processes included lowering pollution within fusion furnaces, cooling, stocking, and the insertion of iron alloys in silos. Each plant had its own graphical interface, settings, and alarm requirements. In addition to a robust system for the set-up, monitoring, and control of its plants, AFV Beltrame S.p.A. required a solution that was easy and fast to develop and deploy. The selected system would need to easily handle several thousand tags and I/O points, working with existing Allen Bradley PLCs. An additional need was the integration with the company’s existing Microsoft SQL Server installation.

The animal healthcare company, a leading international manufacturer and distributor of animal healthcare products, was in need of an industrial controls solution that would best manage and monitor critical process alarms. The company also planned to replace an existing visualization system, seeking a solution that provided additional enhancements. The company’s plant is involved mainly with pharmaceutical manufacturing and packaging. The company uses ICONICS solutions to interface with Allen Bradley PLCs via Foundation Fieldbus, Data Highway Plus industrial LAN and Ethernet network communication structures. Among the Microsoft solutions used on-site are SQL Server and Excel, which are used in reporting and trending.

The Meir Tunnel, a 284 meter long road tunnel located on the A50, a major trunk road in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England, was in need of an upgrade to its Tunnel Control System (TCS) and SCADA system. The tunnel, which is heavily used and strategically important, is operated by Kier Highways on behalf of Highways England. The tunnel is served by an unmanned Tunnel Service Building (TSB) and is controlled and monitored from the main control room located in Coventry. In March 2015, Kier identified the need to upgrade their incumbent SCADA system, future proof their asset management prerequisites and drive engineering response time efficiencies. The challenge was to upgrade the system while returning the tunnel to service every day.

The Oceanium at Diergaarde Blijdorp Zoo in Rotterdam, Netherlands, houses a variety of marine life, including sharks, tropical fish, corals, king penguins, sea lions, and polar bears. To maintain a safe and healthy environment for these animals, the Oceanium's water is regularly refreshed. This process requires large filter installations that are controlled by multiple Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs). The PLCs ensure that the water is pumped exactly where it needs to be and that the filter systems function flawlessly. However, the Oceanium's older PLCs had reached end-of-life and needed to be replaced. Along with the new PLCs, the Oceanium also recognized the need for a new Human-Machine Interface/Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (HMI/SCADA) installation to visualize the data from these connected systems.

In early 2018, the operators of the Austria Center Vienna were considering their building control options, paying particular attention to the building’s security, lighting, blinds, heating, and ventilation. The ACV, working with system integrator TGA, decided upon ICONICS GENESIS64 building automation software, which is BACnet Advanced Workstation (AWS) certified. GENESIS64 was installed on two of the ACV’s servers, with the second server in cold standby. Five clients currently access the server software, which is set up in a virtual environment. There, 15,000 data points are processed, of which about 7,000 are active data points. All devices are now switched via BACnet. For the monthly consumption evaluations, 100 energy meters with M-Bus (Meter-Bus; used for remote reading of gas or electricity meters) are additionally provided for energy-relevant evaluations via a BACnet gateway.

SASKI, the General Directorate of Sakarya Water and Sewerage Administration, provides clean water to the province of Sakarya, Turkey. The organization sought to improve its field data collection capabilities, adding functionality such as full station status, detailed reporting, field device control, fast historical archiving/retrieval, and integration with geographic information systems (GIS). SASKI specifically required an automation software provider that could integrate with their multiple applications across hundreds of locations, including tank storage, drinking water purification/provision, wastewater purification, drilling, flow metering, and more. The water-focused organization initially planned for their new monitoring and control solution to connect to over 50,000 tags, and integrating with on-site OPC-integrated equipment (including PLCs). The chosen solution would also need to work with multiple servers, databases (Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle), and client machines.

As the Port of Koper began expanding both the number and capabilities of its terminals, the port’s management knew it needed to consider updating its control software. In addition to container and vehicle cargo, the port required additional control of equipment such as conveyor belts and scales for items such as iron ore and coal. As far back as 2004, the port management began to look into how to best scale the control of its operations. At that time, each individual terminal contained its own control solution. The decision was made to work with system integrator, Robotina, which had worked with the port on other projects and had earned a reputation as a reliable partner.

Aksa Natural Gas Distribution, Inc. sought an automation system for its Natural Gas Regulating and Metering Stations (RMSs), which are divided into three separate types (A, B, C) according to pressure classes. These stations reduce and regulate downstream pressure, measuring the quantity of energy transferred from Aksa’s natural gas transmission system to medium pressure networks or to consumers who are connected directly to the transmission system. They also add the distinctive odor to the gas, providing prompt detection of any leakages, as required by national and international safety standards. Aksa required the stations’ data to be gathered by a central HMI/SCADA system via OPC servers and PLCs. Alarms are generated from critical values within the received data. Aksa required that their selected alarm management system be able to integrate with their RMS system, as well as to provide notifications. The alarm management system needed to handle thousands of tags, with each tag’s status made available to multiple locations, and if necessary, allow for expected intervention within 15 minutes.

Zentrum für Psychiatrie Südwürttemberg (ZfP) is a large service provider in its region, operating specialist clinics, outpatient departments, and medical care centers. It also works with almost 650 home-based locations, more than 200 outpatient assisted living facilities, an outpatient nursing service, and almost 600 sheltered workplaces/workshops for the disabled. The center considers a high building standard as enormously important to guarantee the appropriate patient environment for the best possible treatment and care. However, for the group’s 157 buildings, this objective can only be achieved with the most modern and technologically advanced building control technology. The prior building management software solution, with approximately 15,000 data points, as well as 500 overview and plant displays, eventually failed to live up to the expectations of the Administration and its multiple locations. The obsolete system was unable to process the required large amounts of data as desired. Data analysis was often delayed and would not show the current state of the building’s environmental conditions. Updates of the existing software were not possible, and development felt frozen in regard to HTML5 programming. These attributes frequently led to emergency staff meetings.

Microsoft's 500-acre headquarters was operating with a disparate network of sensors from different eras, leading to inefficiencies and high energy costs. The company was considering a $60 million investment to turn the campus into a smart campus. However, a team of engineers proposed a different solution. They suggested creating a data-driven software solution that could unify the different systems and provide valuable insights into the buildings' operations. The challenge was to integrate the incongruent network of sensors and enable them to communicate with each other, providing a wealth of data to building managers.

ABC Financial Services, a leading provider of billing and club management solutions, was facing a challenge in providing its customers with flexible and user-friendly analytics capabilities. The company's existing system made it difficult for club owners to extract specific information about enrollment trends, cash flow, and campaign management scenarios. ABC Financial wanted to give club owners the flexibility to slice-and-dice performance metrics, but they didn’t want to burden users with a cumbersome reporting environment. ABC customers wanted more flexibility for visualizing and summarizing data.