A car manufacturer in southern Germany has a redundant WinCC OA system (building management system) in place to optimize and monitor the air conditioning of its data centers and other units such as emergency power generators. The air conditioning system ensures that heat is dissipated and that the temperatures in the data centers are kept within a range suitable for the sensitive equipment. Central applications for production, research and administration are operated in these data centers. A computer failure can therefore have a serious impact on the company.
To ensure that potential faults are detected immediately and forwarded to the responsible experts, the car manufacturer has been using the Alarm Control Center (ACC) for many years.
High-priority fault messages are forwarded to the alarm system by WinCC OA. The ACC then reliably and automatically alerts the responsible persons by voice call, push message and e-mail. The alarm is automatically repeated until a responsible technician takes over to rectify the fault. If an alarm is not accepted by the on-call service within 10 minutes, the management is notified. This escalation ensures that faults are dealt with and rectified efficiently.
By using the ACC, the car manufacturer reduces the risk of failure of its data centers and emergency power generators, and thus the risk of economic losses, while at the same time increasing productivity.
