Challenge.

More than 50 billion containers are made of borosilicate glass each year, and demand is soaring. But detecting room for improvement along tightly synchronised supply chains requires insight created from data.

SCHOTT Schweiz AG in St. Gallen is one of the SCHOTT Group’s largest production sites for pharmaceutical packaging.
They cover all production steps, from borosilicate glass to syringes and carpules, and even developing the production tools in house. In order to provide top quality in a fast-growing market but also to meet digital requirements as well as corporate objectives, SCHOTT was looking for new, innovative ways to store, manage and protect its data.

Employee numbers in St. Gallen recently rose rapidly to more than 630. The production runs four shifts each day and, although the processes are highly automated, many hands and eyes control product quality to meet the strict standards required by the pharmaceutical industry’s Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP).
The challenge was to achieve a single IT infrastructure for all data, which would also have to fulfil the requirements of the Good Automated Manufacturing Practice (GAMP), as even IT systems for production data must be GAMP-certified. In fact, even a seemingly trivial change like adding storage capacity triggers a new certification process. SCHOTT’s IT team discussed the situation with its partner, Bechtle direct.

 

Solution.

Bechtle designed a GAMP-compliant solution using a clustered NetApp infrastructure. NetApp solutions are standard throughout the SCHOTT Group.

 

SCHOTT AG operates the central services and integrates all sites into the central backup using NetApp data replication. Bechtle put all of SCHOTT Schweiz’s needs under one management umbrella right up to backup and disaster recovery. Production and enterprise data are now physically separated, and the data that SCHOTT uses to conduct research and improve material strength are secure. The company also uses the data to reduce breakage and loss of medication from production to mass bottling. The local IT systems are already collecting machine data for quality KPIs. However, systems that are capable of independently identifying issues require huge amounts of data and scalable, robust storage.

The NetApp storage used for SCHOTT Schweiz is a NetApp ONTAP package consisting of

  • NetApp AFF A220
  • FAS2750 
  • FAS2720 systems

Two NetApp ONTAP clusters with six nodes across two sites constitute GAMP-certified hybrid storage for production data. The first cluster was created with the all-flash storage for all other data, with the second cluster being used exclusively for backup and disaster recovery purposes. Data and operations are well protected by ONTAP software. NetApp SnapVault and NetApp SnapMirror provide built-in backup and replication to support undisrupted operations, allowing rapid recovery from scheduled maintenance or unexpected disaster.

NetApp Snapshot technology has changed backups at SCHOTT fundamentally. Snapshots have enabled the company to increase the backup frequency from once a day to once an hour across all data. More backups and granular options allow restores in seconds and massively shorten recovery time.

Veeam software manages the ONTAP backup relations. Meeting GMP regulations is easy now. NetApp SnapLock software keeps data audit-proof and instantly accessible. Tape and bank safes are no longer needed.

24×7 production has no spare capacity. The NetApp solutions keep everything running and can quickly recover data. This helps us to meet delivery deadlines and strengthens the supply chain in the pharmaceutical industry. NetApp data management is easy and Bechtle offers exceptional support. We are very happy to have Bechtle as our IT partner. When it comes to storage management, we can focus on the bare essentials and rely on Bechtle Managed Services for everything else.  In effect, we could run the whole NetApp environment from a home office!

Michael Schachinger, IT Location Manager, SCHOTT Schweiz AG

Business benefits.

The speed and reliability of the new infrastructure implemented by Bechtle is exactly what SCHOTT Schweiz AG needed to serve critical systems ranging from central SAP applications to the local Manufacturing Execution System (MES).

With MES, customers can check online whether their order meets the specifications. For SCHOTT, on the other hand, MES data are critical for day-to-day business. Without them, production can come to a standstill.

With NetApp solutions, SCHOTT keeps everything running and is able to recover data quickly.

This ensures that delivery dates are always met.

Partner.