Secure high-performance network accelerates digital transformation for German lock maker

Carl Fuhr is a specialist manufacturer of mechanical door locks. Like other German businesses of its type, FUHR is committed to digital transformation. It wants to graft digital elements to its design, production and logistics to transform productivity.

"We don't know what digital opportunities lie in the future," says Dr. Tobias Trepper, Chief Digitalisation Officer, Carl Fuhr, "but we understand the importance of a network architecture that will allow us to add, integrate and manage new technologies."

Future-Proofing the Network to Accelerate Digital Plans

FUHR's legacy network was not cut out for the new data-driven digital era that it was envisaging. As much as is possible, the company wanted to future-proof its network, ensuring business resilience, visibility and control, and security.
"The legacy network was slow, unstable and far too manual. There was no real wireless LAN and the security was not ideal," Trepper explains. "It was totally outdated."

The time was right, Trepper continues, to reset the approach and to reimagine the architecture.

Working with Aruba and a local partner, FUHR has established a high performing, secure and highly scalable unified LAN and WLAN infrastructure, capable of adapting to future requirements. The Aruba Edge Services Platform architecture provides Zero Trust, policy-based security and access orchestration with ClearPass Policy Manager. Cloud-based network management and Zero Touch Provisioning are ensured as-a-Service through Aruba Central. The WLAN mainly comprises Wi-Fi 6 AP-500 Series access points, while the network access is built out of Aruba 2930F switches. The network core is also based on Aruba CX switches.

"For the German head office, the production, the warehouse and data centre, everything is now Aruba," says Trepper. "We've brought everything up to date."

Ensuring Business-Critical Stability and Performance

The network reset is a key component in Trepper's digitalisation plan. This includes upgrading hardware to enable home-working for all white-collar staff, a new 1Gb internet link into the head office and the roll-out of Office 365 and Jira project management software. Long term, FUHR wants to develop and sell digital solutions to customers.

In a fast-moving environment, with major projects to deliver, the most significant impact of the move to Aruba is stability and reliability. "We're now ready for uninterrupted digital," says Trepper.

The engagement with Aruba's partner as a managed service provider freed FUHR staff to focus on more value-add digital projects. "Our MSP now handles everything", says Trepper, "monitoring, reporting, incident management and advanced notice of new technology. It does it better than we could. It is one less problem crossing my desk."

There are significantly fewer network issues coming into the service desk, he adds, and those are dealt with 20% faster. This is valuable time spent elsewhere, says Trepper: "We wouldn't have been able to roll out Office 365 as quickly as we did, in five days, if we were still managing the network day to day."

Managing International Operations via the Cloud

FUHR is an international operation, with production in the UK and Poland and sales offices across Europe, but its heart is in Germany. The aim, says Trepper, is that a cloud-first strategy will allow FUHR to manage global operations from Germany. Aruba Central meets this standard.

"The roll-out of Office 365 is the most visible example – our office staff can now work from anywhere. Aruba ClearPass allows us to securely onboard new team members faster, to grant appropriate guest access more swiftly and to be more efficient in the way we manage network access," Trepper says. "And the network is amazingly stable."

Creating a Pathway to Smarter Production

FUHR is now in a position to digitalise its production and logistics. The Aruba ESP architecture enables the business to graft new IoT elements – from securing its existing handheld scanners to cameras to heat or environmental sensors, all geared towards efficiency and productivity enhancement. New devices can now be added with minimum effort and all added to the relevant network segments without the old time-consuming and error-prone manual interventions. The complexities and resulting issues have simply been removed.

For example, FUHR is already a heavy user of Zebra handheld barcode scanners that are critical to the business and that depend on a stable network. "From a security perspective, the onboarding of new devices through ClearPass is simpler and stronger. We're able to automatically assign different devices – printers or scanners, to more than 20 separate VLANs, each with their own security settings," Trepper explains.

FUHR has more than doubled the number of Zebra scanners connected to the network since the Aruba upgrade.

Exploiting Data to Drive New Efficiencies

The goal is seamless, connected production and logistics, where every element is tracked. This may require new sensors and new applications; it may see AI and Machine Learning exploiting the new-found data to find new efficiencies.

"The vision is to have a shopfloor which is able to send data back to the relevant ERP system," says Trepper. "By holding this data in one point we'll be better able to make the right decisions for the business.

"Our main production site here in Germany is made up of a maze of buildings. Wireless means we have no network blackspots and can provide uninterrupted roaming. This is only possible thanks to the flexibility of the Aruba wireless network and the ease by which we can manage new connections and a large number of devices."