A 100% digital value chain
"Space in chiller cabinets and refrigerators is limited. For Emmi, this means constantly impressing retailers and households with high quality, variety and new products. Our 100 % digital value chain with NetApp technology as the basis helps us to achieve these goals." Ricardo Nebot, Head of IT at Emmi
Animal welfare, nature conservation, sustainability, Swiss quality - these are valuable assets in Emmi's position as a premium manufacturer. However, the Group is also under great cost pressure, which is exacerbated by the high Swiss price level. Emmi is therefore continuously improving productivity and is also focusing on growth abroad. After all, competition is tough and the competition never sleeps in Emmi's home market, Switzerland.
Milk processing is high-tech. Emmi's 25 Swiss production plants usually work in three shifts. 6,500 Swiss dairy farms keep the supplies rolling in. As milk spoils quickly, the production processes have to run non-stop. Deliveries could be redistributed or temporarily stored in the event of a standstill. However, this is only possible in the short term and also incurs costs - cleaning systems is expensive. High-performance IT is required for central applications through to production control in the plants. There is hardly any time for maintenance work either. Half a day per month must be enough.
From delivery to production control and logistics, Emmi has digitized the value chain 100 %. Production and IT are increasingly merging into a uniform IT infrastructure, from the network to the data pool. The number of users, data and virtual machines is constantly increasing. The central IT organization in Ostermundigen therefore relies on maximum virtualization, standardization and a central Emmi Private Cloud. It serves core applications such as the SAP system that connects everything, including production planning, as well as collaboration, file and shared services. The standard for data management is NetApp.
Why make it complex when you can make it simple?
"At Emmi, we know from experience that we can rely on NetApp and that the performance is right. We can therefore pursue a single-vendor strategy for data management. This keeps management costs low, reduces risks and simplifies operations,"
Stefan Lüthi, Head of IT Infrastructure at Emmi.
ITpoint Systems AG is a proven partner for Emmi when it comes to NetApp solutions: Whether with pure flash and business continuity setup as in the central Emmi Private Cloud or with hybrid systems and more or less redundancy at the locations, the equipment always fits the requirements exactly. NFS has more than proven itself as the standard protocol. Data management keeps the infrastructure together. NetApp tools provide the overview and central administration and back up the local data from 12 locations in Switzerland and abroad to Emmi in Switzerland on a daily basis.
"The NetApp software is so good that neither performance on site suffers nor time runs out when backing up the external sites. NetApp Backup is a real self-runner and unique in its kind"
Marc Baumann, Team Leader Databases and Storage at Emmi.
Just two colleagues manage the data infrastructure for around 2,500 users, in addition to other tasks. Automation from backup to site failover is just as important for them as it is for the SAP team. This is because SAP environments can now be copied, edited and deleted again with just a few commands, which speeds up testing and QA. NetApp data management is certified for SAP. This also has advantages for a possible introduction of SAP HANA. Instead of having to invest in a HANA appliance, Emmi can simply integrate the HANA component into the NetApp infrastructure and remain flexible.
Focused on efficiency and growth
What was a regional SME 20 years ago is now an international group with around 5,800 employees. Emmi exports to 60 countries and its four divisions - Switzerland, Americas, Europe and Global Trade - generate sales of more than CHF 3 billion. And this figure is set to rise. Growth abroad is a pillar of the Group's strategy, as are strengthening the domestic market and cost management.
IT is also feeling the omnipresent cost pressure and is continuously optimizing the processes and systems in the value chain, for example with a document management system so that each document is only available once and is always accessible. Since 2010, Emmi has benefited from NetApp data management solutions that support every business step in IT - with performance, integration capability and efficiency.
"The central Emmi private cloud now runs with NetApp all-flash technology. Our users benefit from the performance, and we save over 80 % space in the racks." "Compared to its beginnings, our entire NetApp infrastructure is now more than 20 times larger. With NetApp's data management, we have the entire data fabric under control and can get a new site IT up and running in a very short time, no matter where."
Marc Baumann, Team Leader Databases and Storage, Emmi
Convincing retailers and households
Every day, consumers make up to 200 eating decisions based on habit, price, quality and appearance or simply out of curiosity. Not an easy game for food manufacturers in general.
"Space in refrigerated shelves and fridges is limited. For Emmi, this means constantly impressing retailers and households with high quality, variety and new products. Our 100 % digital value chain with NetApp technology as the basis helps us to achieve these goals,"
Ricardo Nebot, Head of IT at Emmi.
About Emmi Schweiz AG
Over the past 20 years, Emmi Switzerland has developed from a medium-sized, regionally oriented company into an international group of companies with over 6,000 employees worldwide. Today, its activities are focused on the Swiss market, the surrounding European countries and North America. In 2017, Emmi generated 51 percent of its sales in Switzerland . www.emmi.ch
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