Independent of time and space
For a company like Brose, operating worldwide and, as a rule, supplying customers as their production demands (Just In Time), a reliable and fast exchange of information and data is a decisive competitive factor. These are requirements which cannot always be met by conventional telephone networks over many thousands of kilometers. Line interruptions, lasting often longer than six hours, are not uncommon in countries which do not have a high-performance infrastructure. According to Siegbert Reuther, head of the department of networks/telecommunications, this is “ no longer acceptable“ for Brose.
The new solution saves costs, but at the same time provides more convenience, making it possible to interlink the telephone systems of all plants. In practice, this means that a German Brose employee can reach his colleague in Mexico by dialing an in-house extension number, just as if he were calling his colleague in a neighbouring office. Expensive long-distance calls abroad are now rather the exception than the rule. Together with the planned picture transmission, the satellite network is evolving into a cost-efficient communication platform: optimum utilization of resources, little effort required for system maintenance and reliable lines of communication, independent of the local infrastructure.
A large dish antenna of 3.70 meters in diameter, located on the roof of the Brose development center in Von-Schulte Street in Coburg gives a clear signal that the automotive supplier is embarking on a new era of communication technology. Since the autumn of last year, the Brose locations in Brazil, Mexico and Spain have been exchanging data with the head office via satellite. In a few days’ time the locations in Detroit (USA) and Coventry (England) will be connected up to the system. The installation of a second antenna in Coburg is planned for 2002 and will make the integration of the Brose locations in Asia and South Africa possible. The company has thus succeeded in covering a considerable area of the globe and is prepared for providing any further locations with communication technology.
The particular feature of the T-SkyNet Frame Relay Services is the bandwidth management. The capacity of 2 megabits per second - that is 30 times more than a simple ISDN connection - is distributed dynamically. As a result of this, all locations connected to the network have high bandwidths with a constantly high transmission quality. Even if several applications are running at the same time, speech and video are transmitted without any time difference.
The Frame Relay is a particularly economical solution for Brose. In contrast to the virtual “leased line” between the seven network-linked locations, a terrestric alternative via cable - if available at all - “would not have been in no way economical”, says Reuther. Each Brose location has much more bandwidth for the price of a transcontinental 128 Kbit per second leased line (double ISDN capacity).The Group gains additional synergies from the different time zones: up to now capacities, which were unused at night but were still being paid for between the European locations, are now used in the new system fully automatically by the overseas locations.
