Manufacturing Case Study
How a manufacturing company optimized their hardware refresh cycles and reduced total cost of ownership by 25% through strategic lifecycle management.
Industrial Manufacturing
ManufactCo is a leading industrial manufacturing company with operations across 12 facilities in the Midwest. Their IT infrastructure supports critical manufacturing systems, supply chain management, and facility operations with 8,000+ hardware assets across servers, workstations, and specialized equipment.
With aging hardware and manual lifecycle management, the company faced escalating maintenance costs and performance issues that impacted production efficiency.
ManufactCo's manual hardware lifecycle management created significant operational and financial challenges. Key issues included:
Aging hardware required frequent repairs and replacements, driving maintenance costs up 40% year-over-year without visibility into TCO.
Manual tracking made it impossible to maintain consistent refresh schedules, leading to performance variability and unplanned downtime.
Older hardware caused system slowdowns that impacted manufacturing efficiency and product quality, with no clear refresh priorities.
Lack of forward-looking lifecycle data made budget planning difficult, leading to reactive spending and emergency procurements.
ManufactCo implemented Sphere to optimize their hardware lifecycle management with data-driven refresh planning and TCO tracking. The implementation included:
Data-driven refresh planning based on age, performance metrics, and business criticality to optimize replacement timing.
Complete total cost of ownership tracking including acquisition, maintenance, and disposal costs for accurate budget planning.
Preventive maintenance scheduling and tracking to extend asset lifespan and reduce emergency repairs.
Real-time performance monitoring to identify underperforming assets and prioritize refresh decisions.
Tracking of residual value and trade-in opportunities to maximize return on hardware investments.
Environmentally compliant disposal processes with data sanitization and asset resale tracking.
Within 18 months of implementing Sphere, ManufactCo achieved significant improvements in hardware lifecycle management:
Reduced total cost of ownership by 25% through optimized refresh cycles and extended asset lifespans.
Improved system performance by 35% through targeted refreshes and maintenance optimization.
Achieved 95% budget accuracy with forward-looking lifecycle planning and reduced emergency spending.
Maintained 100% compliance with environmental regulations and data security standards.
"Sphere gave us complete visibility into our hardware lifecycle. We reduced our TCO by 25% while actually improving performance across our manufacturing facilities. The data-driven refresh planning has been a game-changer for our budgeting process."
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