Mainline helps Hagemeyer Enhance Operations
New Capacity on Demand processor and software upgrade creates capacity, responsiveness and efficiency

With more than 300,000 SKUs, Hagemeyer North America offers perhaps the broadest and deepest range of products and services in the wholesale industry. As a business-to-business distributor of services and products, the company focuses on the industrial MRO (Maintenance Repair and Operations), safety and electrical markets. The company inventories leading brands, including Aearo, 3M, Brady, Cardiac Science, DuPont, Fluke, Norton, Philips, Rustoleum, Square D and Stanley Proto, in the Industrial and Safety MRO, Electrical Construction, Integrated Supply, and Homeland Security markets.

In addition, Hagemeyer offers several innovative and/or proprietary solutions not usually associated with wholesale distributors. The company can also install, maintain, inspect and repair a wide range of products ranging from fire extinguishers to gas detection.

With more than 345 locations, Hagemeyer serves markets throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico.

The Challenge
When the gas tank is empty, it is hard to drive anywhere. And when your processor is out of capacity, your business may suffer.

Hagemeyer's USA business unit was running low on fuel. Its current mainframe processor was out of capacity and the business was growing quickly. Also, Hagemeyer planned to convert the 25 percent of its business not running on a mainframe platform over to it within the coming years. Finally, all major operating and system software products were back level and unsupported. There was not any capacity on the current processor to do migrations to current versions, nor were current levels of software supported on the hardware. As its business levels were growing, it was critical for users to have updated applications to handle the load.

"To put it simply," said Doug Lauer, Hagemeyer USA Senior VP, Information Technologies, "we were running out of capacity and floor space and we needed a platform that we could grow with."

The Solution
Hagemeyer brought in long-time business partner Mainline Information Systems to evaluate the situation.

"It was evident that this customer had capacity and software currency challenges," said Cal Norris, Account Executive for Mainline. "Working closely with Hagemeyer, we determined that the long-term solution involved updated hardware and software."

Current versions of all major software components were ordered. Mainline Professional Services was engaged to install and migrate Hagemeyer to the new versions. This work was performed at Mainline's Tallahassee data center since the Hagemeyer processor had no room for the work. Mainline's system programmers installed new versions of z/OS, CICS and IMS. Skills transfer sessions for the Hagemeyer programmers and pre-install testing was conducted in Tallahassee.

Next, an IBM System z890 processor and IBM ESS were delivered to the Hagemeyer Data Center. Tapes from Tallahassee with the updated products were loaded onto the new processor and testing was continued. Additionally Mainline assisted with a complete data migration from Hagemeyer's RAMAC Virtual Array DASD to the IBM ESS.

Once all parties were satisfied that sufficient testing had been successfully completed, the production cutover was scheduled and executed. Even with all the major changes being introduced at one time, the migration went very smoothly, according to Lauer.

Hagemeyer immediately saw huge benefits in reduced processing and response times. The IBM z890 processor provided the capacity on demand that their organization needed. And it provides the capability to quickly and non-disruptively activate "extra" processor capacity that is built directly into the system as needed.

The Results
"The results are just what we needed," said Lauer. "We are now experiencing the system responsiveness that our growing company needs. And, most importantly, our customers are benefiting. With the proper software applications our customer service representatives are more efficient and can complete more transactions in a day."

Lauer also reported that the company's batch processing time has been cut in half since the implementation of the z890 processor. A six-hour process is now just three hours, he reported.

"Prior to this project, we could only run test applications during 'off hours' so we would not impact production," said Lauer. "Now we can complete testing during the normal business day without a problem."

Hagemeyer is also experiencing a new level of flexibility and responsiveness. Prior to the project, predicting capacity requirements and adding capacity in a fast-growing environment was risky and time consuming, according to Lauer. With its z890 processor, which allows for additional capacity to be provisioned, providing additional capacity is no longer an issue and can be accomplished in hours instead of months.

Why Mainline
"Hagemeyer and Mainline have been partners for a long time and we saw a lot of value in that continuity," said Lauer. "Based on that relationship, we felt that Mainline understood our business objectives and our challenges. We have experienced very good service from the Mainline team for several years and knew they had the expertise to find us the right solution."

"At Mainline, we are in it for the long haul," said Norris. "We want to build a relationship and help our clients grow their business."