With assistance from Help/Systems International

What’s a good name for an adjustable, one size, metal conduit fitting that “clips all”? If you head to Australia, it’s Clipsal. In 1920, that name seemed perfect to describe both the product that Alfred Gerard had developed and the company that would manufacture it. Today, after multiple manufacturing breakthroughs, including the first all-Australian electric switch in 1930, and the pioneering use of thermoplastics in the 1950s, Clipsal has grown. In fact, it’s now the number one brand of electrical accessories in Australia and Asia, and a market leader in data communications for industrial and home automation markets. Clipsal employs more than 2,300 people throughout Australia to produce more than 20,000 different product lines, manufactured at its head office in Bowden, South Australia and three regional factories. In 2003, Clipsal joined with Schneider Electric, the world’s biggest electrical company, to become Clipsal Australia, soon to be an even bigger player in global markets.

At their headquarters in Bowden, Clipsal relies on an IBM System i model 570 in a twin-partition environment for much of their computer processing power. The partition for the Clipsal side of the business houses Movex as their main Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software; Schneider Electric uses the second partition to run their side of the business. Handling the operations manually for a company of this size used to be a major undertaking. Originally, Clipsal had three operators working in eight-hour, rotating shifts, from Monday morning to Saturday morning, and a supervisor. That was before they started using the Robot products to automate their System i operations. In 2004, they invested in Robot/SCHEDULE, the job scheduling and batch job management software; Robot/ALERT, the system event notification software; Robot/CLIENT, the server operations event management package; Robot/CONSOLE, the message, resource, and log management software; and Robot/SAVE, the backup, recovery, and media management software. Now, they are running “lights out,” with one operator working a day shift until 5 o’clock in the afternoon, a supervisor, and a system that is monitored 24/7 by the Robot products.

Three of the key players in this automation implementation were John Sutton, a System i Analyst/Programmer and Security Officer who works with applications and development; Steve Bayley, an Operations Supervisor in the Clipsal MIS department, who handles day-to-day System i issues, such as PTFs and updates; and Rohit Mathur, their Robot sales representative from Help/Systems International.

They started their automation project with the thought of eliminating shift work, specifically to end their night shift, and redeploy the Operations staff more efficiently. With the Robot products, they’ve exceeded their expectations. Today, the staff is free of the responsibility of monitoring the system, which allows them to be more involved in the day-to-day running of the machines.

As John explains, with Help/Systems’ assistance, the road to lights-out operations was pretty smooth. “We got to lights out quickly. We already had an in-house staff for monitoring and scheduling. It wasn’t anywhere near what we could do with Robot/SCHEDULE, but it gave us a good idea of what we needed to achieve. When we implemented the products, the assistance that Help/Systems provided was fantastic. They came in, looked at what we wanted to achieve, told us how to go about it, and we were up and running very quickly. We also took advantage of on-site services from Help/Systems. For two days, we worked with the product and decided how we wanted to set it up. During that time, we made a few phone calls, they [Help/Systems] suggested a few things, and when we were ready to go, they sent a representative to our site.”

Steve felt that their biggest challenge was automating message management. “We used a combination of Robot/CONSOLE, Robot/SCHEDULE, and Robot/ALERT to handle that, and to perform unattended day-to-day operations in conjunction with Robot/CLIENT. We also used Robot/SAVE for unattended restricted state saves.”

Management had hoped for a return on investment (ROI) within three years. According to Steve, “As I understand it, we achieved that just by losing the night shift; and we actually achieved much more. Essentially, our Operations went from four people to two, while handling a bigger workload.” For Steve, the biggest, and most pleasant, surprise was the way the Robot products were integrated. He found that automation was much easier because the modules are designed to work together.

Rohit describes his perspective of the automation process and improvements. “When I started working with John, we looked at the main area their jobs were controlling and monitoring. At that time, management was hoping to eliminate the night shift and there was a lot of manual work required at the end of the day involving the queue data. Basically, operators had to monitor that process to guarantee that it didn’t fail. All that’s running automatically now, without human intervention.

“We have noticed that customers often call to pitch us an automation challenge, a business scenario, or something new they’re about to try. We tell them that if you’re planning to expand your business soon, you may need new systems, and new applications, and we may be able to help you. With Clipsal, we had discussions over the phone and some technical walkthroughs. Then, as the products were loaded, we had somebody on site to help them take it to the next level. It has been a good exercise for everyone.”

Two things that impressed everyone were how easy it was to work with the Robot products and how reliable they are. As John describes it, “I don’t think we’ve really needed a lot of help [support] because the products are intuitive once you get into it. We managed, in about two months, to make everything work ourselves.” Steve adds, “My schedule works everyday. I’m always quite happy because we’ve never had a single problem with the product [Robot/SCHEDULE]. It doesn’t seem to have errors—nothing ever falls over.”

So what do the guys at Clipsal think of when somebody mentions the Robot products? They think of reduced costs, more reliable and efficient processes, products that are easy to learn and use, a quick return on investment, and (with typical Aussie humor) “the little metal men [Robots] that are running around inside the System i and doing all the work”. A nice testimony for Help/Systems from such a big player in the global markets.

by Bob Balderson

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 11:36 am and is filed under Robot/ALERT, Robot/CLIENT, Robot/CONSOLE, Robot/SAVE, Robot/SCHEDULE. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.