w3logistics virtualises at WEPA Arnsberg
WEPA, a pan-European producer of sanitary paper, faced the same challenge as many other companies in his production warehouse at Arnsberg:
The existing WMS running on Windows NT was getting more and more outdated. A new system as a replacement is still in the planning phase. The original supplier of the system is no longer on the market. How could the existing solution be stabilized and a reliable usability be assured during the coming years?
The solution came from w3logistics and it is called "software recycling". In this process, reliability was considerably increased through the purchase of a new computer system. However, on this new hardware, the original operating system could not be executed. Therefore, w3logistics virtualised the WMS computer using special tools, so that not even a reinstallation of the operating system was necessary.
The result: The original hardware state was conserved and runs on a virtual machine on the new computer system. Thus not only the reliability was considerably increased, but also the performance of the system was enhanced noticeably. Moreover, a copy of the WMS now allows for systematic analysis of the legacy system, which can now be renewed step by step.
How well this concept worked out is proved by the statement made by WEPA's system administrator Burkhard Drolshage after the start of operation: "This was rather unspectacular..." His opinion can be easily understood, after all, the software experts from Dortmund only needed about two hours for the operational start.