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The Situation
Johnson Controls is the world's largest independent supplier of automotive seating and interior systems such as overhead systems and consoles, door
panels, instrument panels and floor consoles. Customers include: BMW, Daimler-Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Renault, Rover, Toyota and Volkswagen. Johnson Controls is also a major
supplier to the North American original equipment and replacement automotive battery markets. (Customers include: AutoZone, Carport, Caterpillar, Daimler-Chrysler, Diamond-Star, Ford, Honda, Interstate Battery
System of America, John Deere, Mazda, Nissan, Price/Costco, Toyota and Wal-Mart.) Johnson Controls' mission is to continually exceed customers' increasing expectations. Fundamental to Johnson Controls are continuous
improvements in quality, service, productivity and time compression. Johnson Controls employs more than 90,000 in more than 500 locations worldwide. 1998 sales of $12.6 billion made it #131 in the Fortune 500.
The Challenge
Due to various application restrictions and growth by acquisition, many different UNIX types are involved: Data General, HP-UX, SCO UNIX, IBM AIX,
and SUN Solaris. Each one of these different operating systems handles printer device setup and print queue management with it's own flavor of administration tools, which usually lack intuitiveness and are not
robust. This has resulted in confusion and complexity. Johnson Controls wanted to be more responsive to remote users and IT staff. Due to workloads, higher priority issues and the amount of requests received by
central I.T. staff, unnecessary customer delays were experienced with print queue and device setup and management. These print-related service requests accounted for approximately 40% of all calls into the I.T.
Operations area. I.T. managers requested the ability to setup and manage their own print queues and devices. Thus, print management fell under an overall strategy of providing deployment and support capabilities for
I.T. services down to the business unit and plant level. A consistent, common, standardized interface across all platforms was essential.
The Response
LP Plus was tested against other commercial solutions and proven to be the best. After a proven track record was established at Johnson Controls
with Oracle Financials, LP Plus was rolled out to over 60 servers, allowing seamless setup, operation, and troubleshooting for disparate systems, applications, and users.
The Result
Now both users and central I.T. staff are empowered and more productive. Offering simple user interface commands with menu selections on character
terminals, LP Plus eliminates user training, call placement, logging, and callback, while minimizing downtime.
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