Automotive leader makes agility gains with cloud innovation

A leading manufacturer in the automotive parts sector has deployed innovative cloud technology to achieve greater business agility.

 

Coventry-based Unipart Powertrain Applications (UPA), part of the Unipart Manufacturing Group (UMG), is a Tier 1 supplier to the global automotive industry. Its challenge was managing stock held on-site balanced with the need to deliver it on a just-in-time basis, a tight supply chain where even minor service interruptions can have knock-on effects across the entire Unipart business.

 

UPA identified a need to eliminate database latency issues impacting the just-in-time delivery capabilities of its automotive parts division, and its solution was to deploy the Nutanix Cloud Platform and AHV hypervisor. It said the combination was able to provide the necessary performance uplift and also reduce complexity, simplifying management and making the business as a whole more flexible.

 

The Unipart team turned to independent infrastructure specialist and Nutanix partner Softcat, which recommended migration to a Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI). Two clusters were installed, the first to support day-to-day production workloads followed later by a second for data replication, load balancing and disaster recovery, along with backup to NAS and long term archiving offsite. Beyond support for core manufacturing, ERP and database workloads, the ability to install graphics accelerator (GPU) cards in the new cluster and share them using the AHV hypervisor was seen as another plus, according to UPA.

 

With AHV handling virtualisation, more than 80 VMs needed to be migrated, a process managed using Nutanix Move. UPA said performance has been improved across the board while the database latency issues have disappeared entirely with measurable effects in terms of productivity.

 

In the short term, UPA is concentrating on automating day-to-day management tasks and supporting teams responsible for product development. Looking beyond that, the group’s new cloud investment is expected to play a significant role in enabling rapid diversification away from automotive engineering into other areas such as battery manufacture and other low-carbon technologies requiring flexible production facilities, backed up by an agile and easy to manage IT infrastructure.

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Book of the Month*

The Serendipity Mindset: The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck

By Dr Christian Busch
Serendipity is an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. To other people it looks like “good luck”, but it is more the ability to recognise and seize an opportunity, rather than have good fortune thrust upon one. Finding a wallet stuffed with money on the conference room floor is good luck, whereas holding it up and asking if anyone has lost their wallet might be the beginning of a valuable friendship – that would be serendipity.

Chance encounters, or strokes of fortune, feature in countless stories of business success. This book looks beneath the surface, reveals and teaches the mindset that can transform pure chance into opportunity. The author is director of the Global Economy Program at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs, and a lecturer at the London School of Economics.

Serendipity is an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. To other people it looks like “good luck”, but it is more the ability to recognise and seize an opportunity, rather than have good fortune thrust upon one. Finding a wallet stuffed with money on the conference room floor is good luck, whereas holding it up and asking if anyone has lost their wallet might be the beginning of a valuable friendship – that would be serendipity.

The author says “This is a book about the interactions of coincidence, human ambition and imagination”. In the above example: finding the wallet is the coincidence; ambition is the desire to make something of the discovery; add imagination and you open up a whole menu of possibilities: from spending spree to earning a reputation for honesty – or even making a wealthy friend.

Business is typically forged on human ambition and imagination, but early success often feeds an appetite for control – and “control freaks” can be blind to the opportunities thrown up by the unexpected. They only see chance events as distractions. If plans go awry, they may blame the failure on “bad luck” rather than admit their own inflexible attitude.

The author himself admits to being “a German who is used to planning” and prone to feel anxious when something unexpected happens. That makes him an ideal teacher, because he has worked hard to discover and analyse the mindset that enables one to “connect the dots” and cultivate serendipity. He presents a goldmine of examples from science, business and life where an apparent mishap or failure lead to a breakthrough.

Indeed, studies suggest that around 50% of major scientific breakthroughs emerge as the result of accidents or coincidences. A well-known example is Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin, launching the whole field of antibiotics. Other examples include X-rays, nylon, microwave ovens, rubber, Velcro, Viagra and Post-it Notes – where would we be without these!

The book goes beyond the ability to recognise and respond to opportunities in chaos, but the subtitle – The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck – is actually a bit misleading. True, he does show ways to develop better fortune, but it would be better to call it “inviting” or “encouraging” good luck. For example, he suggests better ways to start a conversation with a stranger – ways that will make it more likely to lead to chance connections or shared interests.

The publishers may have chosen the word “creating” to make the book appeal to the human desire to control – for control freaks are exactly the readership that would benefit the most from this book’s wisdom and practical advice.

For the rest of us, it offers a great way to rediscover the sense of play that is so important in life – and too often lost in business.

 

“Following the success of The Serendipity Mindset hardback, a paperback edition has also now been launched under the title “Connect the Dots”.

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