Fenner Conveyors is a world leader in reinforced polymer technology, manufacturing and servicing of industrial conveyor belt technologies for some of Australia’s largest mining and resources projects.
The network services the needs of more than 800 employees – with tasks such as end-user computing, server and database access. It is also assisting company expansion and avoiding potentially costly customer service disruptions. To date, all of the company’s 36 sites have been migrated to the Orro network.
One of the network’s most important functions is assisting with the company’s 24-hour site service, installation, maintenance and diagnostics services.
Conveyor belts are used by mining companies to transport ore and other materials from mines to locations where they can be processed. Some of these projects are modern engineering marvels – with one in Queensland measuring more than 4 kilometres long.
Any faults or damage to the conveyor belts are serious issues, with outages potentially costing companies hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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“Orro provided us with a full migration plan and they stuck to it throughout the life of the project.”
Sammy Jammal – National IT Manager, Fenner Conveyors
Fenner Conveyors, which has been manufacturing rubber conveyor belts in Australia for more than 150 years, has recently introduced autonomous conveyor belt monitoring – via the Orro network – which helps with testing, evaluation and support with a team of onsite engineers.
Sammy Jammal, National IT Manager at Fenner Conveyors said, “We came to Orro to replace our ageing MPLS network at our 36 sites across Australia. With the help of CISCO Meraki SD-WAN, we have been able to mesh 4G, broadband and fibre technologies into one seamless network.”
Critically, using Orro and Meraki monitoring and management tools, the network support team can receive real-time visibility into the network. This means Orro network support and Fenner Conveyors’ technology teams can proactively detect any ISP outages or disruptions to the system, to enable real-time network routing and patching.
This is particularly important as the geographical spread of sites means that network performance, security and reliability are critical for Fenner Conveyors.
In addition to helping existing customers, the Meraki cloud-managed devices make it easy to set up new job sites, as well as enabling Fenner Conveyors’ IT team to manage their entire network remotely from a single location in Melbourne.
The company had previously deployed an MPLS solution from another vendor, but it had meant extensive travel and time setting up the environment every time a new site was opened. Jammal said “Orro provided us with a full migration plan and they stuck to it throughout the life of the project. We were able to migrate our entire network and now with our redundant solutions, users do not see any issues and there is no down time.”
It also means that Fenner Conveyors can spend less team resources on network maintenance, instead focusing on more long-term strategic programs.
The company has recently been trialling embedded sensor technology on customer conveyor belts in Port Hedland – using the network to automatically carry data on machine performance to engineering and manufacturing teams.
The Orro network will enable Fenner Conveyors to continually embrace evolving digital technologies, which deliver more relevant data anywhere and anytime.
