Factory 4.0

With production facilities in Belgium, Romania, and China, Picanol Group is evolving its manufacturing capabilities to foster innovation. Its Factory 4.0 strategy promotes tighter integration between IT and operations to deliver smarter, technology-led solutions that help drive the business. Marc Colman, IT Infrastructure Manager at Picanol Group, states, “Our robotics produce a lot of data, which we can use to make smarter decisions about how our machines should work and how to better manage storage and shipping. We always want to know where we can automate or do something better, faster, and with fewer errors, and that’s where IT and the business go hand in hand. We’re trying to do as much as possible driven by IT to make the new Factory 4.0.”

A loom with a view 

To enhance innovation, Picanol Group needed flexibility within its digital infrastructure. Its environment consisted of on-premises Hyper-V plus an Azure Stack Hub cloud implementation, which the group added to run services required by the business but unattainable through aging, on-premises hardware. Picanol Group needed to retain and manage on-premises workloads because it could not risk dropped connectivity at its production facilities, which would leave 1,500 workers idle, and some of its vendors only ran on VMware. But the group also needed a solution that offered the versatility of the cloud. Azure Stack HCI is Arc enabled infrastructure that uses hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and is delivered as an Azure service. 

John Debersaques, Senior System Engineer at Picanol Group, says, “We buy manufacturing equipment that lasts for 30 years, and the vendors usually aren’t willing to invest in upgrades. We use Azure Stack HCI so that we can run those legacy workloads on-premises.”

Also, Picanol Group’s hybrid state required separate management for each of its environments. Establishing unified visibility across its infrastructure would help the group make smart decisions faster. Colman recounts, “We wanted to manage our whole environment with a single solution. That’s what we got with Azure Stack HCI—the flexibility to run workloads in the cloud or on-premises and decide at each moment where we want our resources.”

Less management, more innovation

Through its Azure Stack HCI implementation, Picanol Group manages a 12-node cluster in Belgium with 670 terabytes on SSD storage and a 4-node cluster in Romania with 84 terabytes on SSD storage. It runs more than 200 virtual machines (VMs) between both locations. In its Microsoft Cloud environment, Picanol Group has deployed Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Customer Service, along with Microsoft 365, including SharePoint and OneDrive. In addition to these services, Picanol Group runs all its Hyper-V virtual machines on Azure Stack HCI.

In terms of security, Picanol Group has completely separated its on-premises and cloud environments, which allows it to take advantage of Microsoft security features for its Azure implementation. Debersaques states, “We really benefit from the ability to just go to the Azure portal and get a clear idea of what’s going on in our cluster at any moment, like checking for security alerts and available updates.”

Using Azure Stack HCI makes it easier for Picanol Group to manage its hybrid environment and find the flexibility it needs to meet its business innovation requirements. Debersaques continues, “Azure Stack HCI with its native integration with Azure Arc, helps us bring new Azure services, like Azure Logic Apps, to our on-premises workloads and move managed databases between on-premises and the cloud. And because Azure Stack HCI is a managed environment, we get continuous updates and the ability to build new features.”

Weaving future opportunities

Picanol Group’s new centralized management through Azure Stack HCI gives its employees greater visibility and assurance with less effort. “We’re a company of 2,500 people spread across the world, with 1,500 production employees depending on our IT systems—and an infrastructure team of 5,” says Debersaques. “It’s incredibly important to have that single-pane-of-glass visibility with Azure Stack HCI, so we can manage our environment proactively.”

These operational improvements translate to significant business benefits. Picanol Group now does more, faster. Colman states, “We’ve improved our flexibility, time to market, and costs. With Azure Stack HCI, we can build up quickly in the cloud and then move workloads back on-premises depending on cost.” This helps Picanol Group offer lightning-fast time to market to support key business initiatives and puts the group in the driver’s seat with the power to move workloads between the cloud and on-premises as cost and business priorities dictate. “With Azure Stack HCI, we have the agility to provide what the business wants and needs and to move faster to market,” says Colman.

Picanol Group has positioned itself to make the most of technology advancements as they become available. The group can evaluate Azure feature enhancements and other new developments on an ongoing basis and shift to a continuous improvement and DevOps approach. Indeed, Picanol Group’s infrastructure team is already fielding requests for microservices and containers from various development groups.

Having the flexibility required to develop innovative solutions faster to meet business challenges as they emerge is vital for Picanol Group as it pivots into Factory 4.0. Colman concludes, “Our on-premises hardware environment had reached end of life, but we couldn’t fully move to the cloud. We struck the perfect balance with Azure Stack HCI. We have the flexibility we need to move between the cloud and our on-premises environment, and to add the resources we need as we need them, where we want them, and at the lowest cost, to best serve the business.”