Global Pharmaceutical Manufacturing

LANTRONIX DELIVERS OUT-OF-BAND MANAGEMENT OF REMOTE DEVICES FOR PHARMACEUTICAL MANUFACTURING
Success Highlights
- Enables continuous out-of-band access to and control of devices
- Drastically reduces the impact of costly network outages and unexpected repair downtime
- Reduces support response time from 3 hours to 3 minutes
- Ensures quality control and compliance of initial device configurations
- Reduces interruption of network-dependent production processes
Case Study Overview
One of the world’s largest global pharmaceutical manufacturers deployed Lantronix’s out-of-band solutions for remote management, incident triage and fast response to network infrastructure issues. This results in fewer issues, reduction in costly network outages and an increase in up-time.
CHALLENGE: Lack of Access and Expensive Downtime
Prior to installing the Lantronix’s out-of-band solutions, the company’s challenges included:
- Lack of access. It was difficult if not impossible to provide immediate response to network issues since there was no way to provide remote support.
- Expensive downtime. It was costly to have downtime as the manufacturing floor has both the real-time costs of delayed production as well as the potential cost of lost work-in-progress in the development of pharmaceutical products.
- Absence of secure access. It was not possible to gain secure access to the gear behind the manufacturing firewall.
- Missing configuration records. There were no details on initial configurations when the gear was deployed or replaced, nor were there any records of configuration changes.
- Previous lack of maintenance. Routine updates and maintenance of device configurations were not done, leaving systems vulnerable to failure.
“The Lantronix out-of-band solution helps this leading pharmaceutical manufacturer avoid costly network outages and interruptions caused by downtime while gaining the benefits of increased network uptime.”
– Jacques Issa, VP of Marketing, Lantronix Inc
SOLUTION: Lantronix’s Out-of-Band Solution Provides Remote Management of Devices
The company chose Lantronix’s advanced out-of-band solutions, including its LM83X with 8-port serial card, LCD card, LTE modem and the Lantronix Control Center. Lantronix’s hardware-agnostic out-of-band management platform supports devices from multiple vendors, ensuring continuity across the network.
Lantronix’s out-of-band solution provides:
- Secure management access to network infrastructure behind the manufacturing floor firewall
- Continuous direct monitoring of network infrastructure to triage issues andautomate device recovery using standard runbook responses
- Automatic device configuration management when a network admin logs into a device
- Zero-Touch Provisioning of devices on initial deployment or replacement
- Custom automation of network device monitoring and data-driven management, enabled through the Lantronix rules engine
“The manufacturer’s ROI depends on the advanced out-of-band solutions from Lantronix that help avoid costly network outages, interruptions caused by downtime and slow access to support, which can quickly cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.”
– Jacques Issa, VP of Marketing, Lantronix Inc.
RESULTS: Reduced Costly Network Outages and Downtime, Improved Remote Management
With Lantronix out-of-band management, for networking gear isolated behind the manufacturing floor network firewall, the IT team can now:
- Securely and remotely gain access
- Monitor service levels to ensure uptime
- Detect, record and roll-back configuration changes
- Automate recovery of failed devices
- Create custom event-based automation to detect issues and maintain service levels
- Address issues automatically in Network Layers 0-3.5