Paessler PRTG weaves a textile factory’s IT infrastructure at Skytex Group

About Skytex Group

Skytex Group is a family-run vertical textile factory founded in 1997. The factory has more than 80,000 square meters that meet international standards and is located in the Huejotzingo Industrial Park in Puebla, approximately 13 kms outside Mexico City.

The Group employs over 1,700 men and women from the surrounding areas, who see Skytex as a place of learning. It not only provides employees with on-the-job training, but also offers training programs for advancement, family integration, literacy and English. The company provides its employees with an environment to grow professionally and personally.

Skytex has integrated a completely vertical production system. In addition, it is an innovative company that invests heavily in growth and technology so that it can continue to provide its customers with a superior product at a competitive price.

Skytex Group consists of a group of companies that, thanks to their state-of-the-art technology and determination, can guarantee the highest quality in all their products. Within different branches that include the clothing industry, fashion, home decoration, cleaning, mattress industry, furniture, and others.

The Group is made up of Skytex, a company dedicated to the manufacture of flat and knitted fabrics produced with high quality synthetic and artificial fibres; Skyfelt, which specialises in the manufacture of non-woven felts; and Skymatt, a manufacturer of regenerated fibres and non-woven products for the mattress, furniture and automotive industries.

Thanks to the vertical integration of all processes, from twisting the yarn to printing the fabric, it is able to guarantee the highest quality in all its products, and thus, offer the best service to customers, always complying with government regulations in the field of industry, and local specifications to meet its own objectives and programs in ecological matters.

„We used to live with uncertainty because we didn’t monitor anything. Now, the benefit we were looking for was obtained with Paessler: to have the peace of mind that everything is working.”

Salvador Cassab, Managing Director of Grupo Skytex

The challenge

Skytex is convinced of the fundamental role that cutting-edge technology plays in adequately meeting market demand in a global economy. For this reason, they proposed to have the most modern technology and equipment available in the world, including digital systems applied to the design, engraving, weaving and printing of fabrics, as well as the most advanced production control systems that make it possible to supervise each step of the entire manufacturing process, in addition to a complex IT environment and a monitoring system for prevention and control of all the Group's operations.

Skytex Group produces more than 2 million meters of fabric per week so it is a great challenge to have all the elements of the plant controlled to ensure high availability. Salvador Cassab, Managing Director of Grupo Skytex, comments: “A year ago we started updating the technological infrastructure in the Group, my IT team selected the Paessler PRTG Network Monitor solution because it meets our needs and is easy to install and use.”

Cassab said that as Director he must have all operations available, because if something is not working it has an impact on production. To maintain the plant's operational continuity and guarantee its technological relevance for the coming years, Skytex has invested in renewing its IT infrastructure. This required finding a way to ensure that the new devices they invested in worked properly, as well as having control over the availability of their services. Network monitoring with PRTG was the way they met these objectives.

Solution

To get everything under control, the group's IT team installed PRTG, and in less than three days configured nearly 1,000 monitoring sensors and graphical dashboards.

What does Skytex monitor with PRTG? The manager reports that his monitored devices include access points, switches, switches, Exchange, servers, firewalls, SQL, storage, Internet speeds and web pages. Cassab said that the devices monitored by PRTG are not only in the main plant in Puebla.

In a simple way and in the same user interface, the tool allows them to monitor the availability of their services in the plant of Silao, Guanajuato, in addition to the offices in Mexico City. “Skytex is incorporating more and more devices outside of the main network into monitoring to expand the group's technology visualization at its various physical locations”, Cassab said.

In addition to monitoring the devices mentioned above, Skytex has found that PRTG allows them to monitor another critical part of their environment: the CCTV security cameras. Inside the plant it is necessary to ensure that the cameras are operating and recording all the time, but doing so manually is a great challenge.

By incorporating its 260+ cameras, in addition to DVRs, into its unified monitoring console, the Skytex team not only maintains control over its traditional IT assets, but also over this plant's physical security system in an automated manner and with a single tool. The creation of a control panel for the CCTV system allows to visualize graphically the status of the video surveillance and to inform opportunely in case of some inconvenience, so that it can be solved quickly.

Today, the intensive and adequate use of technology has allowed Grupo Skytex to have highly controlled processes through totally computerized systems, so that it can permanently guarantee the superior quality of its inputs, raw materials, products and processes.

Cassab says that in addition to their rigorous production controls, they have a monitoring system that allows them to track their clients’ orders to ensure timely delivery of all their products.

Previously, the Group's executives did not have a monitoring solution, and today with PRTG they have managed to visualize and control different types of technologies connected to their network and guarantee the complete satisfaction of their customers.

Benefits

“We used to live with uncertainty because we didn’t monitor anything. Now, the benefit we were looking for was obtained with Paessler: to have the peace of mind that everything is working. We have a preventive and safe system that allows us to know the status of each device and to prevent any incident before the user realizes it, so that production never stops. We didn't have this peace before,” Cassab said.

The manager considers that one of the most outstanding features of the PRTG solution is that it has helped them to know the availability (uptime) of their services, and to detect connection losses in order to correct them in the shortest time possible. They make sure that everything installed is working properly. So, “the main advantage is knowing that when we need a service it's going to be available.”

Conclusion

Paessler’s success at Grupo Skytex is due to the fact that they were able to ensure that their entire infrastructure works 100%, making the IT area invisible in a positive sense, as they manage to provide the necessary services to ensure business continuity, without users having to look for them to report problems.

A year ago they decided to update their equipment and monitor the technologies involved in the operation of the plant. They chose PRTG because it is a simple, robust and reliable tool that allows them to control both their IT and their CCTV system, providing confidence in their daily operations. For this reason, they have thought of expanding the use of PRTG in the near future, adding any new service to their monitoring scheme.

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