Columbus Chemical Industries
Overview
Columbus Chemical Industries, Inc. (CCI) is a wholesale distributor of chemical products. They specialize in ultra pure custom formulations. They have facilities in Columbus Wisconsin and Phoenix Arizona.
InfoSys aids Columbus Chemical in disaster recovery
Infosys hosts remote office for Columbus Chemical employees
The day after a devastating fire, InfoSys quickly setup a remote office for the Columbus Chemical employees. The employees were able to receive calls at their normal numbers, receive emails, and were even able to take orders from their customers.
InfoSys hosted the remote office at their hosting facility located in Beaver Dam WI, for two weeks until Columbus Chemical employees were allowed to return to their facility.
Excerpts from
www.columbuschemical.com
May 11, 2009 Fire at Columbus Chemical
On Monday, May 11, Columbus Chemical Industries experienced a fire in one of our five buildings at our Wisconsin facility.
Currently access to the facility is not available while we are working with local, state and federal officials to address this issue. CCI intends to resume limited operations as soon as we are able. We appreciate the support and concern from the community, our suppliers and especially our customers.
To keep the public and our business partners informed, we will update our web site as soon as new information is available. Thank you for your support as we work to overcome these events.
May 27, 2009 Exactly 14 days after our devastating fire, we are back in production
We missed our goal by 7 days! We knew that if we ever had a serious first-responder call, we’d lose control. We honestly thought we’d lose control to the regulators, of whom there are many! We didn’t know that we’d lose control to a group who would investigate the origin and cause of our fire! Little did we know that the need for these folks to protect evidence, folks who legitimately act on our behalf, actually would stand in the way of our ability to resume production in facilities unaffected by the fire.
Because we can’t work while the hazmat response teams are remediating our site, we work from 8pm to 8am. And, we did that on Memorial Day with a group of volunteers who packaged, labeled and organized work stations. On Tuesday, from sites located across town (InfoSys Consulting) and in Phoenix, AZ, we shipped product!
Tuesday night will be better than Monday night and Wednesday night will be better than Tuesday. Day by day we are making progress. We thank all our neighbors, friends, colleagues and customers who have helped us achieve these remarkable results. We will emerge stronger and better equipped to serve the needs of a thriving growing economy.
More at
www.columbuschemical.com
History
In 1997 CCI was struggling with frequent network crashes. Productivity suffered because of the frequent reboots required of both the server and the workstations. Their aging server was running an outdated version of Novel Netware. InfoSys solved their frequent network outages by:
- Diagnosing and replacing faulty network cabling
- Installing a new business-class HP network switch
- Replacing their old server hardware
- Converting their network to Microsoft Small Business Server
Like most companies, CCI had several computer systems running critical systems. Unfortunately, none of these systems could share information. What they needed was a central repository for all their corporate data. InfoSys has integrated many of the separate systems into a single centralized database. This central database now serves the following systems:
- Inventory and Accounting
- Web site and on-line catalog
- Laboratory records
- Label creation
- Bill of Materials
As CCI has grown, so have their needs for improved communications. InfoSys implemented a new VoIP phone system at CCI. CCI converted from expensive analog phone lines to a more cost effective digital TI-PRI. They also connected each of their facilities in Columbus and Phoenix into a single seamless phone system. By leveraging the capabilities of VoIP, CCI can now call any of their facilities simply by dialing an extension – and because these calls run over the internet these call are free! Security has been a growing concern for CCI. To help monitor their facilities, InfoSys implemented a small proof-of-concept video system in their Columbus facility. Based on the success of this project, InfoSys is currently in the process of implementing a video surveillance system in their new Phoenix facility.
Future
Backup, disaster recovery, and business continuation are the next challenges to tackle at CCI. The recent fire in Columbus highlighted the vulnerability of the current systems at CCI. InfoSys is currently developing a solution that includes off-site data replication and virtualization of servers at the InfoSys data center in Wisconsin.