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Sub-Zero faced the largest product launch in the company’s history:It wanted to launch 60 new products as scheduled while simultaneously opening a new “greenfield” production facility, yet still adhering to stringent quality requirements and manage issues from new supply-chain partners. A the same time, it wanted to increase staff productivity time and collaboration while reducing travel and costs.

Stanley Black & Decker required transparency of real-time overall equipment effectiveness and line productivity to reduce production line change over time.The goal was to to improve production to schedule, reduce actual labor costs and understanding the effects of shift changes and resource shifts from line to line.

North West Redwater (NWR) intended to build, manage and operate a new bitumen refinery. The new refinery was being built across six square kilometers and would include over 100 contracting companies participating in the construction phase of the project. NWR wanted to provide connectivity to the 100 contracting companies over a dispersed remote area in order to simplify the contractor onboarding process, decrease operating costs, and control the project schedule.

Lordan needed a manufacturing automation system that could identify bottlenecks, reduce downtime and waste, and improve overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). Requirements included the ability to view overall throughput and track mission-critical manufacturing information in real time directly from the production floor, rather than rely on periodical assessments.

Mazak required a common, standards-based method to securely connect and derive value from the rich, raw data in its machine tools. An advanced security system suitable for IT and operations technology (OT) was necessary to protect from both internal and external attackers. The application needed to run on the network infrastructure on the factory floor, immediately transforming process, overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), and sensor data. The fog application needed to support the MTConnect specification for integration with existing systems and sensors. Real-time analytics were required to process high frequency vibration, temperature, coolant, and sound inputs to inform operator action and drive business support systems.

Emerald worked with Cisco to shrink the time to production for its manufacturing process automation system. The leadership team sought self-deployed solutions that would drastically decrease installation time, reduce complexity, and increase security.

Manufacturing plants are running at a much higher capacity utilization than ever before. Often, it is a 24 hour a day, seven days a week operation. With downtime costing plants up to US$20,000 a minute, they cannot afford disruption to their processes. In fact, a single occurrence can cost a plant upwards of US$2 million.

The City of Mississauga in Ontario, Canada, improved services with a private fiber network and a citywide wireless network using Cisco solutions. Key Challenges: • Provide open and accessible government • Help enable better decisions through research and analytics • Create a connected and engaged workforce • Improve services through innovation

By connecting thousands of sensors to an extensive network, Austria's autobahn corporation, ASFINAG, has created a smart highway designed to clear traffic jams before they happen. Through the Internet of Everything, ASFINAG gets the data needed to keep roads safe and drivers happy. Challenge: • Gain data on road, traffic, and weather conditions • Communicate accurate information to drivers

Inaccurate order picking and resulting loss of customer satisfaction.

The challenge for Cisco IT was to continue providing a global wireless LAN that could serve as a primary access medium and deliver more bandwith and coverage to more users, while satisfying the company's business requirements. The next-generation WLAN would also need to provide native support for wireless video and voice, with high levels of accessibility, availability and security to reduce service-impacting incidents. 

Networked applications, such as electronic medical record (EMR) or electronic health record (EHR), are vital for Cook Children’s to provide outstanding service to its patients and physicians. As its network grew in complexity, with data coming in from various wireless medical devices and wearables, as well as remote hosted applications, issues surfaced. The organization’s network manager identified a range of issues that included slow user experience, network monitoring challenges, and an inability to proactively identify application performance concerns.

• Geographically dispersed campus made in-person meetings costly and inconvenient.• Distance-learning programs in Malaysia, India, and China required dependable, user-friendly online tools to maximize interaction in collaborative workspaces.• Virtual learning environment required a separate sign-in process, resulting in a significant administrative burden for IT staff and limited adoption of collaboration technology.

To address the challenges of proactively monitoring the very large Cisco Unified Communications global network and to achieve reliability and service quality goals, Cisco IT turned to the Cisco Unified Communications Management Suite. The Cisco® internal Unified Communications network is a very large global deployment, having more than 85,000 IP phones spread over six continents.Being in new and uncharted territory in the initial stages, the Cisco IT team first had the challenge of defining methodologies and metrics for measuring and monitoring the key components of service quality: Availability (Can I pick up the phone and get dial tone? Does my call connect? Can I leave and retrieve voicemail?)Performance (How is the voice quality? Did I get disconnected mid-call? How does the voicemail sound? How fast is the voicemail prompt?)The team also had the additional challenge of figuring out approaches, techniques, and tests to:Detect configuration issuesReduce recovery time in the event of a service failure 

Prior to purchasing Observer, Cisco Systems experienced a lack of visibility during and after network events.“I needed large data captures and a way to manipulate them,” says Eric Arnold, Service Provider Video TAC Manager for the company.Arnold states that Cisco Systems chose Observer over competitors because of the packet capture and storage capabilities.