Mining Success With Thin Clients

Neyveli Lignite Corporation was unable to track the inflow materials and its
subsequent utilization, which meant that payments began piling up. Additionally,
maintenance of the deployed IT system was becoming troublesome, especially with
virus outbreaks. That's when it thought of going for thin client for a
simplified infrastructure

Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC) is the biggest lignite mine in India. It
mines 24 million tonnes of lignite annually and generates power with installed
capacity of 2,490MW. It is also one of the major power suppliers for Tamil Nadu.

NLC is engaged in exploitation of lignite deposits for more than four
decades. It conducts exploration of lignite deposits in and around the Neyveli
region, with due attention to quality, economy, efficiency and consultancy
services to other organizations in such areas where NLC has requisite
professional expertise. The company also has an expertise in renovation of old
thermal power stations and regeneration of old bucket wheel excavator and other
mining equipments.

It was facing a problem in its material management division, where it wasn't
able to track the material coming in and its utilization due to which there were
lots of payment issues. Apart from that, there were lots of virus issues and
maintenance related problems. A search for this solution led NLC to deploy thin
clients from HCL Peripherals through Chennai-based solution provider, Skylark
Information Technologies.

The biggest challenge that Skylark faced was that NLC wasn't automated and it
didn't have a proper solution for managing the materials that came in. The
material management crew didn't have any clue, as the entire process was lengthy
and manned by several personnel.

“Primarily there were problems with the management of materials and hardware
up gradations too took a big toll. There were several PCs and virus problems
added fuel to this fire. Apart from this, the maintenance of PCs was also a big
task,” said Chandrasekar, DGM-Material Management, Skylark Information
Technologies.

Skylark deployed 300 thin clients and some servers for Rs 3.5 crore at NLC

The course of action

When NLC considered auto­mating their operations and with the help of IIT
Karaghpur, it finalized on a web-based solution for automating the material
management process. Also considering the amount of employees involved, it
preferred to go for thin clients, keeping in mind the maintenance problems.

“Understanding that the project included more people, we recommended HCL
Peripherals' thin clients to NLC as it would not have any maintenance problems,
compared to PCs. We installed 300 thin clients with two servers along with
disaster recovery solutions,” said Karthik, Project Head, Skylark Information
Technologies.

On the cost savings part, Karthik said, “Obviously when compared to PCs, thin
clients have saved almost 50 percent of the cost. Another added advantage for
the client is that there is no need of any upgradation of hardware and the data
is 100 percent secure in the server.”

He added that there were no challenges in deploying thin clients in NLC
except when it came to implementation. “Normally while deploying architecture
like thin clients there wouldn't be any challenges as it is easy to implement.
However, there were few challenges but it was on the other side of the
implemen­tation. NLC used Solaris and it had to be configured to the Citrix
server, which was a challenging task. With the help of our technical team we
solved that too,” he said.

The total value of the project including the maintenance and other network
implementation was around Rs 12 crore. The deployment of 300 thin clients with
some servers was done for Rs 3.5 crore by Skylark. They also deployed a
four-member team for the maintenance of the total operations in NLC.

The after effect

Earlier when some material entered NLC, the company was unable to keep track
of that, due to which their payment process got affected. “Delayed payments
attracted a lot interest and the situation took a toll on the overall business.
Now with the thin client deployment the company is able to keep track of the
materials and the new setup has helped them to have seamless access to the data
in the server. The vendors payment got debited correctly and lots of interesting
functions were taking place,” Karthik said.

“We were able to track the products online, which earlier didn't happen.
Since it was an online process, retrieving data was easier and quick. After the
deployment of thin clients, it increased the speed of automation process too due
to easy data retrieval,” said Chandrasekar.

The deployment also helped top management to be in the loop as they were able
to keep track of operations. Whenever there is an involvement of a large number
of people in a project, security of data would always be under threat.

“Since everything was accessed from the central server, the operations were
completely secured. Thin clients are very much instrumental in keeping the data
secured as around 300 people were involved, which wouldn't have been possible
with desktop PCs,” Chandrasekar claimed.

So how did the deployment of thin clients help NLC to improve their
productivity? It is very hard for NLC to calculate the profitability and
productivity in tangible terms. But the company's management agrees that the
contemporary scenario is far better than what existed earlier.

“I would say that after the deployment of thin clients the results are
better. The automation has certainly improved the earlier scenario,” said
Lesley, Technical Incharge-Material Management, NLC.

Comparing the performance of desktops and thin clients he added, “Ultimately,
if we look at the cost factor, thin clients have greater advantage over desktop
PCs as the numbers are huge.

If we can compare the maintenance cost involved per PC for around 300 PCs it
would be a huge one. Similar case with hardware upgradation too.”

Lesley noted that since NLC is using a web-based solutions and the thin
clients don't house any local storage, the company's IT operation has become
virus free.

NR Sethuraman

sethuramannr@cybermedia.co.in