Case Studies

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Dow Corning

This $2.7 billion maker of silicon sealant and personal care products installed its first wireless network in April 2000, with five wireless access points and just over 200 wireless clients running on Windows 2000. Dow Corning's venture into the Wi-Fi world began when a vendor brought along an 802.11b product during a routine visit to Jim Marshall, who, at the time, was the company's telecom manager. Marshall was impressed with the product's simplicity and affordability. So much so that to help out Dow Corning's engineers, who complained that during too many meetings they lost a lot of time trying to access the company's wired network for important documents, Marshall set up an Enterasys RoamAbout 802.11b wireless LAN to extend the company's Ethernet to 185 IT workers at company headquarters in Midland, Michigan. Dow Corning's employees responded enthusiastically.

Laptops now give workers access to email, the Internet and project documents. Employees can work at their desk, in a conference room or in a colleague's office. Marshall says, "Staying connected from any location lets the users communicate more effectively and participate in different workgroups throughout the day."

Marshall goes on to say, "Our people embraced this technology so quickly; you see people stop wherever they happen to meet-in hallways and some of the strangest places-and collaborate, because they're always connected to the network no matter where they are in the building. If I tried to take out our wireless capability now, they'd kill me, because the mobility and time savings it provides is incredible."

After the network switched over to Microsoft's Windows XP operating system, Marshall was struck by how well the operating system handled the transition from one network to another. When a user suspends his system in one network environment and brings it up in another, Windows XP understands that it needs a new IP address and is dealing with new default gateways and network parameters-all transparent to the end-user.

"The stability of Windows XP in the face of a changing network environment is what really stands out," Marshall says. "When you move from a wired network to a wireless network to an infrared network, it's pretty much a seamless operation now. If you want to add hardware or drivers to a device, you can do it while the device is in use. You can update the firmware on the network card while it's in the machine, and it doesn't appear to ever lose the network connection. These improvements are worth their weight in gold."

Senior managers liked the pilot so much that Dow Corning decided to go with 802.11b as the network backbone for a new corporate office in Belgium. Then came another wireless LAN for connecting a warehouse and office building, and yet another for an engineering group in Kentucky. The company also plans to deploy wireless LANs in other buildings on the corporate campus.

"One weekend we put up an access point and started handing out wireless cards to people. Now it's prevalent throughout the organization," says Marshall.

Of course, it wasn't quite that easy. Between the ceilings and floors of Dow Corning's three-story campus building is corrugated metal with poured concrete, which effectively isolates signals on each floor. Marshall installed several Enterasys RoamAbout R2 access points on each floor and put them on the same IP subnet, so client addresses don't have to change as users move through the building.

Dow Corning also found that going wireless has some downsides. According to Marshall, there are rare times when bandwidth can max out, such as when a meeting is called and all IT developers are in a conference room logging on to the network from the same access point. But bandwidth bottlenecks are negligible, in the company's IT building, as well as on the IP network backbone in Belgium, which feeds 85 users that are heavy bandwidth consumers.

As these networks grow and wireless technology matures, Dow Corning will likely consider faster wireless technology. Among the more promising is 802.11a, the IEEE standard that brings access speeds up to five times that of 802.11b, to 54 Mbps. A downside is that 802.11a will require new access point radio cards and client NICs because it operates on the 5-GHz frequency range.

Going wireless saved the Dow Coring a ton of money. Including the cable, electronics and labor to pull the cable. According to Marshall, Dow spends about $300 for a wired port, compared with $180 for a wireless port.

Dorsey & Whitney, Attorneys at Law

Wireless LAN technology is also used at Dorsey & Whitney, a law firm with 22 offices worldwide. It installed a wireless LAN in its new high-rise building in Minneapolis. The WLAN enables visiting clients to access the Internet and their corporate intranets from the firm's conference center. It also allows lawyers visiting from other Dorsey & Whitney offices to have wireless access to the firm's corporate LAN.

Dorsey & Whitney spent $5000 for the wireless LAN access points, says Mike TerSteeg, the firm's legal technology consultant. The firm purchased four Cisco Aironet 350 access points that plug into Cisco routers to cover concentrated areas in the conference center. Such access points, which include transmission cards and antennae for transmitting data as far as several hundred feet, range from $200 to $1000, half of what they once cost. The adapters that provide a wireless interface to each user's notebook computer cost less than $100. Those adapters are still more expensive than high-speed wired Ethernet NICs, but TerSteeg feels that, when compared with what his company would pay in labor to get the wires behind the wall, they're well worth it.

Federal Express

At Federal Express, wireless networking is an important part of the overall networking infrastructure. This company has deployed wireless throughout two campuses at its headquarters in Memphis, and is treating the WLAN as a full-fledged member of its corporate network.

Ken Pasley, Federal Express's director of wireless development, says that FedEx's employees have come to expect the convenience of wireless access. If a group gathers for a meeting in a location that doesn't have wireless coverage, they'll move until they find access. However, although a WLAN connectivity speed as low as 5 Mbps can support a huge range of business applications, including enterprise resource planning and PowerPoint, Pasley does have to keep an eye on large file downloads, such as CAD/CAM drawings, since they can cause network slowdown.

FedEx was an early adopter of wireless networking. It started using proprietary wireless LAN technology in the late 1990s, albeit mainly in package sorting and aircraft maintenance areas. Gradually the company shifted its wireless assets from those early proprietary LANs to 802.11b to gain higher bandwidth. FedEx discovered that once 802.11b was in place, the company saw a 30% jump in productivity at its package sorting centers, says Pasley.

H.J. Heinz Co.

In 2001, the H.J. Heinz Co. deployed a WLAN in its Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania corporate headquarters. The reason? Well, according to Kurt Kleinschmidt, a senior network analyst at Heinz, "It was just nice to have. There was no real business issue that WLAN addresses."

To add mobility to their corporate offices, the IT department first researched the situation. It bought and tested access points, network interface cards, and client adapters from several different vendors. Then the staff analyzed the results. Cisco Aironet 802.11b series won the day, mainly because of the Aironet series' early adoption of the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP).

The next step was for the in-house IT staff to install and configure 20 Aironet 350 APs, set up wireless-enabled laptops for about 100 employees (mainly senior business managers and IT professionals), and teach them how to use the equipment to access the WLAN.

Heinz is happy with its decision. And although the company has no plans to provide enterprise-wide WLAN access anytime in the near future, its IT department will install APs elsewhere when an office requests it.

General Motors

At GM, the march toward wireless was jump-started by Ralph Szygenda, GM's vice president and CIO. Under Szygenda's leadership, GM spent the latter part of the 20th century investing $1.7 billion in new Internet applications, while reducing its IT costs by more than $400 million.

Over the last few years, Szygenda and GM's chief technology officer, Tony Scott, noted a growing interest among GM business managers in wireless capabilities. Of course, GM personnel were already geared toward wireless because of (1) the company's OnStar division, which delivers wireless applications to automobile consoles and (2) its manufacturing plant managers had installed wireless networks (usually proprietary in nature) early on, and thus were well versed in radio frequency and spread spectrum technologies. The latter group was clamoring for newer wireless technologies. Furthermore, like so many other organizations, the wireless action was already taking place internally at the workgroup level-end-users were playing with wireless hardware and implementing their own impromptu wireless networks.

In April 2001, Szygenda decided it was time for GM to develop a wireless strategy-one that would enable wireless networks to deploy globally. Toward that end he formed a wireless strategy task force, consisting of 30 people from various divisions of the company, and put Scott in charge. The group's initial assignment was to write a white paper outlining where wireless was currently being used at GM, and where GM could take advantage of wireless opportunities.

Sixty days later, the task force presented Szygenda with a strategy for untethering GM on all levels, from dealer sales floor, factory floor, and distribution warehouses to construction sites, corporate offices, and manufacturing plants.

First, the group recommended a framework for prioritizing potential wireless projects. While the company grew excited about the potential of wireless technologies and made it a corporate priority, it also realized that every wireless project would need to save the company money, and the projects achieving that goal the quickest would be the first to be implemented.

Next, the task force recommended that since the wireless projects would need to be able to deploy globally, they would need to be based on universal standards.

Then the group determined where the first wireless networking capabilities would be implemented: construction sites, office environments, and in manufacturing and material handling processes. Finally the group decided, after much debate, the individual projects where the company could see the fastest return.

The focus on quick ROI meant that, of the three broad areas of focus, GM concentrated first on deploying WLANs to quickly connect the trailers that surround the automaker's construction sites. Those temporary shelters are typically hardwired, adding time and expense to the process of wiring and cabling. The 802.11b infrastructure allows users to communicate over the WLAN from their laptops or handheld devices. When the project is over, the WLAN hardware is easily redeployed at another construction project. Scott says that savings from such deployments have been significant.

The next projects were aimed toward mobilizing the corporate office environment. According to Scott, this was to enable office workers to collaborate via email, PowerPoint presentations, and other content without having to find a fixed LAN connection. He also commented, "We're doing more collaborative work in conference rooms, also-so it's beneficial to be able to have people come in with their PCs without having to run wires."

Next came the task of untethering manufacturing and material handling processes in order to improve quality and reduce inventory costs. Like many enterprises, GM wanted its loading dock workers, for example, to be able to enter inventory information into ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems as soon as goods arrive from suppliers, which in turn, would speed its arrival to the manufacturing shop floor.

A new manufacturing plant near Lansing, Michigan, met the latter two requirements and became one of the first GM sites to deploy a WLAN linking administrative, security, human resources, and other departments.

GM also expects to save by eliminating or reassigning technicians who currently handle moves, adds, and changes for wired workstations.

"Our criteria for how we spend remains the same regardless of the economy," Scott said. "We're making a business decision for what enables business the best. We're looking for return on investment while managing a broad portfolio of activity."

A Change Of Thinking

Scott describes GM's wireless project as a significant "change of thinking" in how GM's application architects design offerings. He clarifies by saying that although wireless technology can enable new applications, developers must be aware of the bandwidth, data display, and security limitations of wireless transmissions and systems.

GM doesn't have a master plan for which applications will be wirelessly enabled, but Scott lists applications ranging from ERM, CRM, and inventory management, to the remote monitoring of forklift trucks on the factory floor (allowing forklift operators to enter information without leaving the vehicle), as clear candidates for wireless. According to Scott, "We justify these on a project-by-project basis."

Lessons Learned

There are lessons to be learned from GM's wireless strategy. First, if your organization is not currently developing a WLAN strategy, you're late to the game-especially since employees have probably already brought their own wireless devices into the facilities, to ease their workload with the help of ad hoc WLANs. Industry experts say that now is the time to join the Wi-Fi bandwagon, particularly for large, global, multifaceted enterprises like GM.

The Wi-Fi phenomenon, along with affordability advancements, convinced GM that it was time to officially embrace wireless, Scott said. "I compare it to 20 years ago, when PCs were first coming out and there was a lot of reluctance about whether or not PCs were viable. It took many years for us to change, and I'm not going to let that same thing happen in the wireless space." During the last few years, General Motors spent millions of dollars to install wireless LANs throughout its plants and offices.

Like in many large organizations, the catalyst for GM to adopt Wi-Fi was that a number of departments and manufacturing divisions had already started implementing different handheld devices and different wireless networks. Szygenda, Scott and others knew that they had to try to put order into this potential chaos.

The task force initiative helped GM identify and prioritize potential wireless networking projects, leading to a series of major wireless deployments. It also helped the company zero in on the 802.11b standard as a core enterprise technology for GM. The 11 Mbps data speed that 802.11b provides is more than sufficient to handle the applications GM expects its WLANs to support. In addition, it led GM to standardize its global wireless networking platform around Cisco Systems' Aironet suite of products. Devices from that suite are integrated with Cisco's 10-Mbps LAN infrastructure. (GM also has a 100 Mbps and Gigabit wireline LAN infrastructure.)

Eventually, the initiative will lead to wireless projects that will touch practically every aspect of the company's operations, from marketing and sales to the factory floor.

Despite economic concerns, GM's eventual goal is to give its employees faster access, through wireless networking technology, to all kinds of business information as they roam GM's vast facilities. And its overall wireless objective is to gain experience in terms of extending this technology into as many areas as possible-distribution centers, dealerships, factories, transportation centers, corporate offices, and more. In order to do that, the task force knows that it can't rest on its laurels; it must continue to develop GM's wireless strategy as the technology unfolds.

Even as GM forges ahead with wireless projects, however, Scott and his team continue to exercise caution. While there are departmental pilots under way using Palm handheld computers in sales, service, and marketing areas, he said there are no plans to provide wireless access to mission-critical systems enterprise-wide, just yet.

Scott also anticipates a few problems. While the company expects that it will eventually see great savings from the wireless enabling of many of its applications, bringing wireless networking into the manufacturing environment may introduce safety concerns. For instance, the company is studying to what extent WLANs could interfere with the wireless communication spectrum that is currently used by manufacturing-floor machines.

And, despite being a Wi-Fi advocate, Scott believes that the technology still has a long way to go. "Right now ... the security model is something that has been a bit difficult from an administrative standpoint." The security concern surrounding 802.11b, for example, is what helped to persuade the company to standardize around products from a single vendor. It was felt that by going with a platform built around all-Cisco products, the company could avoid security gaps that might result from attempting to knit together products from different vendors.

Nonetheless, Scott believes the potential of wireless networking will eventually outweigh all the administrative headaches and current technical shortcomings. According to Scott, while GM is "not telling our guys that work in the wired space to quit their jobs because, certainly, wired has some pretty strong advantages, [GM's] belief is that wireless will change everything about the way we run our business."

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