Client
Market
About
Georgia-Pacific (GP) is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of tissue, pulp, packaging, building materials, and related chemicals. A major ongoing project involves overhauling the communications infrastructure in about 90 locations, spanning three of the company’s product areas – consumer products, such as tissue paper and paper towels, packaging and cellulose, which includes cardboard boxes, and building materials like plywood and gypsum.
Since most of GP’s raw material is derived from timber, the locations are largely located in remote, forested regions of the United States – for example, the deep Southeast and the Pacific Northwest. Each rural ‘campus’ installation includes some office accommodation but is mostly industrial-manufacturing footprint.
Agility and continuous innovation are central to GP’s business. However, the existing technology infrastructure at these sites did not have the flexibility or capacity required to support their ambitions. Each site needed robust, future-ready connectivity that would provide capacity for future improvements, while also having the agility to make rapid, frequent changes to the network.
Another critical requirement was pervasive wireless to support next generation manufacturing equipment such as AGVs and enable staff to work more effectively across a large campus.
Operating in competitive and extremely cost-sensitive markets, the project was given an aggressive and ambitious timeline.
For each site, an infrastructure solution was designed that utilized the features of both copper and fiber optic cabling. Molex Jetted Fiber was also specified for many locations to deliver fiber cables over long distances quicker and easier, significantly reducing the time and cost of installation.
Once installed, Jetted Fiber makes networks much easier to modify and scale. Fiber cables can be replaced or added quickly so the network is more adaptive, and experiments and trials can be run inexpensively. In contrast to static cabling solutions, there is no need to overestimate capacity at the outset as subsequent enhancements can be made with minimal cost and disruption.
To ensure the network can be managed moving forward, nearly 200 employees and partners have been through Molex’s market leading technology and installation training.
This large-scale project remains ongoing. However, the unique features of Jetted Fiber were instrumental in meeting GP’s budget and timeline targets, and its flexibility means it will continue to deliver cost savings throughout the lifetime of the installations.
Andrew Schindler, Senior Program Director at GP, commented: “A major attraction of Molex’s solution was the ease of making changes. It is essential that each campus can be dynamic and adapt quickly.
“The fact these changes can be made with a minimum of cost or disruption substantially lowers the total cost of ownership at each site.”
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