by jbs091009 i3 — September 11, 2009—Nissan North America Inc. (NNA) recently announced that the company has dramatically reduced the number of computer servers necessary for its manufacturing operations from 159 to just 28 at its Smyrna and Decherd, TN plants. The consolidation has reportedly increased NNA’s production efficiency and has cut energy usage by 34 percent, freeing labor hours that can be used on other initiatives that add value to its operation.
Nissan conducted a thorough inventory of its servers and defined a refresh strategy for its system infrastructure. NNA used Microsoft Hyper-V software, which allows multiple virtual machines to operate on a single physical machine. The virtualization technology helped to create a smaller and less complex system at the Smyrna and Decherd plants in less than 12 months, says Nissan.
As a result of the refresh, Nissan says it has realized the following benefits: increased reliability with minimal system downtime; reduced expenses for running the system; standard disaster recovery plan; an efficient setup for redundancy; improved manageability; compatibility with new systems; smaller footprint to house fewer servers; and a 34 percent reduction in energy costs.
