The Challenge

Satellite company BlueYonder’s twin satellite system Gemisat, under concurrent manufacture in Paris and London, is due for simultaneous launch f rom sites in the UK and France.

To avoid any single point of manufacturing failure, the satellites’ components are being built, tested and assembled using duplicate supply chains in French and British assembly plants.

But now, just 8 months f rom launch date, regulatory and political problems in Europe have led to significant distribution delays in Paris – thereby jeopardising the success of the entire event.

Solutions

• Our initial risk assessment of the programme showed that only three applications were high risk.
• Using LoadRunner and Login VSI to validate the performance of the VDI we conducted extensive performance testing of up to 500 users.
• Initial testing concentrated on their internal system and once it was understood and validated then performance testing was conducted against the external client focusing on the VDI farm.
• We stressed the BIZ talk server and it responded well.  We also performed data upload automation vi SoapUI web services as there was no capability at the time.

The Power in Prodigy

Prodigy is telling BlueYonder CEO George Atkinson that the French plant will not have all the dead-reckoning and antenna components in time for assembly, manufacturing completion and launch.
With the prioritisation dashboard in Prodigy indicating that everything is on course for a successful UK launch, George and his senior team focus their attention on Paris.
They assess the viability of shifting the component supply chain from France to America, with possible assembly and manufacture of the second satellite in Detroit, followed by a USA launch.
Because the entire global source product catalogue is contained within Prodigy, they are able to shift the French operation to the USA, secure in the knowledge that all required information will be immediately available to the new local management teams.

The Result

With French manufacturing abandoned and resources reallocated to the USA plant, the Gemisat project stays on track.
The US and British Gemisat manufacture is completed on time – and BlueYonder celebrates successful twin launches f rom South Uist in the UK and Mojave in the USA.

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