Featured content from our partner, Lenovo.
Who Is Shanxi Jianlong?
Ranked first in the top 100 private enterprises in Shanxi Province in 2019, Shanxi Jianlong Industrial Co., Ltd. (Shanxi Jianlong) produces over 50 varieties of high-quality metal products, including high-strength construction steel, carbon and alloy structural steel, automobile steel, and much more.
With an annual production capacity of 5.6 million tons of iron, 6 million tons of steel, 3 million tons of hot rolled coil, 2.6 million tons of fine building materials, and 1.6 million tons of special strip steel, Shanxi Jianlong is a key player in the economic growth of Yuncheng City, Wenxi County, and Shanxi Province.
In line with the Yuncheng Municipal Party Committee’s regional development goals, Shanxi Jianlong is on a mission to create a world-class steel production plant and support the creation of a wider industrial manufacturing hub in the Yellow River area.
The Challenge
At its launch, Shanxi Jianlong set out to build a brand-new steel manufacturing facility from the ground up. To ensure efficient operations and achieve the highest production quality, establishing a state-of-the-art Manufacturing Execution System (MES) was a top priority.
“We knew that a powerful MES would be crucial to our success. Not only would we use this system to manage the entire manufacturing cycle, but also to ensure excellent product quality, meet strict plant safety requirements, and drive continuous process optimization.”—Xiaofeng Wang, Engineer of Automation, Shanxi Jianlong
Why Lenovo?
After reviewing a range of proposals from multiple vendors, Shanxi Jianlong selected a software-defined infrastructure based on seven Lenovo ThinkSystem SR660 V2 servers, powered by 3rd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors and virtualized with VMware vSphere technology. The solution pools virtualized compute, storage, and networking resources for high availability and redundancy.
Xiaofeng Wang continues: “The Lenovo solution stood apart from other vendors’ proposals because it offered outstanding performance and reliability—making it the ideal platform for our MES system.”
Each Lenovo ThinkSystem SR660 V2 server is built around a 32-core Intel® Xeon® Gold 6338 processor, which will enable Shanxi Jianlong to process vast volumes of manufacturing data rapidly, while also optimizing resource utilization.
“With a unified, software-defined infrastructure from Lenovo, we are well positioned to migrate our core applications, such as our MES, into a private cloud environment in the years ahead. Ultimately, this will give us more options to reduce IT costs and streamline system management as we continue to innovate and grow.”—Xiaofeng Wang, Engineer of Automation, Shanxi Jianlong
Rapid, Responsive, and Local Support
To achieve a smooth implementation, Shanxi Jianlong worked with Lenovo experts to configure and deploy its new software-defined infrastructure.
Xiaofeng Wang says: “Lenovo has an excellent track record of helping companies across different industries enhance their operations, so we knew we were in safe hands. And the fact that Lenovo can provide local on-site support was a huge plus, too. With help from the Lenovo team, we installed, configured, and optimized our new IT infrastructure and got our core applications up and running quickly.”
- Hardware - Lenovo ThinkSystem SR660 V2 with 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors
- Software - VMware vSphere
- Services - Lenovo On-Site Services – Deployment
With Lenovo
ThinkSystem SR660 V2 servers underpinning its new MES, Shanxi Jianlong has already established a production environment for its steel-rolling operations, and plans to bring iron-making and other steel-making activities online in the coming months.
“We are really pleased with the maintenance and after-sales support provided by Lenovo. If we encounter any issues, we can rest assured that Lenovo will help us to resolve them quickly to minimize business disruption.”—Xiaofeng Wang, Engineer of Automation, Shanxi Jianlong
Results
Since launching its new steel manufacturing operations, Shanxi Jianlong has become a huge driving force for economic development in Shanxi Province. Lenovo ThinkSystem servers have helped the company to achieve this status by empowering the company to scale its operations seamlessly and optimize operational efficiency.
Xiaofeng Wang explains: “Our new software-defined infrastructure has helped us to achieve 45% lower operational and IT maintenance costs, while also improving the performance of our core systems by over 40%.1 As a result, we can keep our MES running smoothly 24/7.”
- 45% lower operational IT and maintenance costs1
- 40% improvement in system performance1
- 50% reduction in future IT development costs1
Today, Shanxi Jianlong can scale its virtualized compute, storage, and network resources as its business needs evolve. And looking ahead, the company anticipates that it will reduce future IT development costs by up to 50%.1
“With Lenovo ThinkSystem servers, powered by 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, supporting ultra-efficient scalable steelwork manufacturing, we can focus on delivering high-quality products to our customers and powering economic growth in Shanxi Province.”—Xiaofeng Wang, Engineer of Automation, Shanxi Jianlong
Running its MES on Lenovo technology has also helped Shanxi Jianlong maintain a strong workplace safety record, as Xiaofeng Wang explains: “Thanks to the excellent performance of Lenovo ThinkSystem SR660 V2 servers, we can quickly analyze vast amounts of data during blast furnace simulations. This helps us to spot potential process optimizations and ensure that our manufacturing facilities always meet the highest possible safety standards.”