VIDEO: Retail Data Center in a Box [Customer Case Study]

Shane Garrett:

A customer of ours, a large, national pharmacy retailer, made an acquisition of another company. They needed to roll this out quickly, so they brought us in. We understood their environment. We have years of a working relationship, and we needed to put together a program that couldn't fail, that could be done quickly, efficiently, and right the first time.

Dave Fafel:

This customer needed an integrator, someone who could build their complete compute and network stack for each one of these new locations. That included servers, networking gear, phone system, cabling, cabinet, security devices. Everything that would manage and operate this retail location needed to be built and custom configured to each location.

Another requirement was that we be able to keep up with the volume of cabinets needed for this rollout. At the peak of this rollout, we were producing 160 fully configured, customized cabinets per week to support the rollout.

Todd Grubbs:

What was unique to this project was that it was not 1,700 of the same configuration. Each store had specific configuration, contact information, IP addresses. So we had to logistically separate and build all the products for each store. It was equivalent to doing 1,700 worksheets.

Lauren Page:

My responsibilities in this project were to implement and identify the people we would need to bring together, the tools we would need to put together, and the processes that we would need to implement to manage such a large-scale rollout.

Todd Grubbs:

The first thing we did was we put together a team of subject matter experts led by a project manager that met with the customer's project manager. We learned all of their concerns, what their rollout schedule was, what their dates were, and all the things that they were concerned about. We put it on our map and said, right from the beginning, we need to go 1,700 out of 1,700. We don't want to miss any dates. To this particular customer, a missed delivery date of the solution stack would mean a store not opening on time, and that would mean lost revenue for them.

Dave Fafel:

So how do you manage the rollout of hundreds of cabs per week, in thousands of locations, and keep that process flowing? Well, we had to really change our processes internally. We had to automate a lot of the operating system installation procedures, and configuration setting procedures. We scripted all of that, from scratch, just in support of this project. We also changed our QA processes as well to accommodate this, this rollout, so that we could ensure that every single cabinet that left this facility had gone through a very strict QA process and was going to arrive configured correctly.

Todd Grubbs:

When we set the goal of 1,700 out of 1,700, with zero DOA's, zero miss dates, quality control became a big issue. We actually, in-house, developed new quality control tools to make sure that as each store went out, the equipment that was in that stack was specific for that store. It had the proper configuration. It had the proper cabling. It had the proper contact information. It had the proper tracking and ship address. So we built a tool in-house that as we were at the end, before we were about to put it into the custom packaging, we could QC all of this with an app on a phone to make sure this was precisely what was supposed to go to that store.

Carlos Cardenas:

At WEI, one of the major components, or culture, is good communication with the customer. We were able to communicate efficiently between four different buildings as well as communicating with external customers.

Todd Grubbs:

It was quickly obvious that the challenge with this project was going to be its sheer scale. We had to ramp up. We put a team together of subject matter experts. We were across four facilities. We knew it was going to be large. It ended up being more than a hundred thousand parts, 1,700 shipments, more than 20,000 hours of work.

Shane Garrett:

With any large project, there's going to be challenges, issues. Our process, our people, our flexibility allowed us to meet all of those milestones. As a result, our customer was able to open their stores and generate revenue daily.

Dave Fafel:

And that's why WEI was selected for this project. Our ability to keep up with the volume, produce quality work and to be flexible and adaptable. So as changes came along, we were able to accommodate those requests without interruption of the project.

We are already a strategic supplier for this particular customer. We provide them with a lot of their pharmacy technology, whether it is pharmacist's work stations, digital signage, networking gear and other technology. We've been providing that for quite some time.

Lauren Page:

One of my favorite parts about WEI is the creative problem solving that we offer to our customers and I think that this project really exemplified that.