Fresenius Kabi

Fresenius Kabi has more than 22,500 employees worldwide, a global network of around 55 sales organisations more than 60 production sites and compounding centers. In 2010, Fresenius Kabi's sales were €3,672 million.

The Problem

For operational efficiency reasons, Fresenius Kabi decided to merge 3 existing sites in Cheshire into a new purpose built site that included general office facilities, warehousing and hi-tech “clean room” manufacturing areas.

To support Fresenius Kabi’s operational workflow, Gigabit Ethernet was needed to desktop workstations and PCs, along with a flexible and secure wireless network for mobile working.

The consolidation from three sites to one site also posed a challenge for their voice communications, as they wanted to avoid the cost of a brand new voice switch, new handsets and an increased number of users, with of course minimum disruption to dayto- day call handling.

The Solution

During the consultative sales process, it became clear that Fresenius Kabi would benefit from a single point of contact which could be trusted with not only the provision of new data network infrastructure but could also provide a migration path for the Alcatel switches.

We designed the network topology to meet Fresenius Kabi ‘s connectivity requirements and proposed that the CAT6 cabling of the new building should be split into a number of phases to match the building contractor’s project plan.

This resulted in the Gigabit Ethernet network being installed on time and without any post-project snagging errors that might need time consuming re-cabling. To ensure resilience and future proofing we used a 10Gbps solution for the network backbone with a 1Gbps failover capability.

In addition to this we provided the Ethernet switching fabric as well as the secure segregated wireless 802.11bg network which covers various roles including a “guest” internet network as well as a main one providing access to Fresenius Kabi’s corporate network.

To reduce further cabling expense and timescales, we implemented Power over Ethernet (PoE) to the wireless base station controllers, resulting in an homogenised cabling network with a 25 year manufacturer’s guarantee.

Finally we devised and implemented a consolidation plan for the three voice switches that meant their original investment was optimised and the useful life of the equipment cost effectively extended.

Benefits Experienced

From the CEO’s perspective, a major infrastructure project was completed on time and to budget, which has enabled the
efficiencies originally planned to be realised with minimal disruption to day-to-day operations. In addition the workforce can be
more flexible in where they work and are therefore more productive.

The Finance Director has reduced opex by consolidating three networks onto one and by consolidating the previous three voice switches into one. The 10Gbps backbone ensures that increases in network traffic can easily be absorbed so there are no network upgrade costs. In addition to this, the installation is “maintenance free” due to the 25 year manufacturer guaranteed ACT6 cabling specified by Freedom, an accredited installer.

The IT Team has a resilient, secure and future proof network that delivers plenty of bandwidth to the Users’ workstations and PCs. The VLAN has been segmented to facilitate different work zones and the overall quality of the installation has eliminated physical network issues.

The End Users benefit from a much more responsive network that has resiliency at its core so that network outages won’t affect
their productivity. In addition the wireless network allows them to work more flexibly around the site.