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The Situation
Created in 1943 by Corning Glass Works (now Corning, Incorporated) and The Dow Chemical Company, Dow Corning was organized to explore the potential
of silicones, materials that combine the temperature and chemical resistance of glass and the versatility of plastics. This manufacturer has developed over 10,000 products and specialty materials, 50,000 customers
from most every major industry, $2.5 billion in sales (1998), and employs more than 9,000 globally with 29 manufacturing sites to serve customers quickly. Headquarters are in Midland, Michigan, U.S.A., with Area
headquarters located in Brussels, Belgium, and Tokyo, Japan.
The Challenge
The central data center is located in Midland, Michigan with over 40 SUN Solaris systems clustered for a quickly growing SAP R/3 worldwide
implementation, printing business critical shipping and order documents to almost 2,000 printers around the world, including approximately 60 remote NT servers with JetForm electronic forms software. As part of the
SAP implementation and MVS-to-UNIX migration, centralized setup and control of a reliable and scalable print delivery system was needed as well as the tools for administrators and helpdesk. Automated remote print
management functions and efficient delivery to the end point were requirements for Dow Corning.
The Response
With central production (and fail-over) OM Plus Output Management servers, printing is seamless across servers, modules, and geographies.
Administration is eased to the point of forgetting about it, and help desk staff now have the tools to quickly and easily resolve print/output-related issues. Also, with Plus Technologies WinPrint Plus Server for
Windows NT systems installed, documents are quickly received from OM Plus and reliably processed by JetForms into the finished documents needed for Just-in-Time processes.
The Result
"We use OM Plus to provide timely, robust worldwide delivery of our SAP output documents. It seamlessly replaced MVS-based print services to
control over 1,500 printers located in more than 30 countries. It has created a simplified, reliable service for our Solaris, AIX, NT, and Windows environments processing output from R/3, JetForms, intranet, and a
variety of other applications - and at a fraction of the cost of other output management alternatives. We are especially impressed with the interest and response of Plus Technologies' product development team to
provide enhancements to meet our unique data delivery requirements."
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