Customer Success Story
Koppert takes the sting out of Refreshing Warehouse Operations with Juniper Mist
Will the 10 billion people of 2050 have enough to eat? How can we secure the production of healthy food in ways that are safe for both people and the environment? Innovation in agriculture is a priority as the population grows. Koppert Biological Systems, the world’s largest producer of bees, is a leader in sustainable cultivation and pest management. Koppert chose the Mist Wireless LAN Platform to ensure a modern, future-oriented wireless network that will serve both its business and warehouse operations.
Overview
| Company | Koppert |
| Industry | Manufacturing |
| Products used | Wired Assurance, Wireless (Wi-Fi) Assurance, EX2300, SRX300 |
| Region | EMEA |
Improved
Operations at warehouses and distribution centers
Empowered
Staff with efficient barcode scanners
Increased
Productivity with AIdriven troubleshooting
Supported
increased use of video conferencing apps
Koppert’s business has grown steadily since its inception, averaging 12 percent each year since 1967 to reach a global scale of subsidiaries in 27 countries. With demand for its products increasing, Koppert took a close look at its operations and started planning for improvements.
“We decided to implement barcode scanning in our warehouses,” says Gertjan de Vogel, senior system administrator at Koppert. “To support our scanners, we wanted the best possible Wi-Fi performance and a modern cloud architecture that supported automation, AI, and more advanced technologies.”
After researching state-of-the-art wireless LAN solutions, Koppert migrated to the AI-driven Wireless LAN Platform from Mist, a Juniper company. “In every category that we investigated and compared solutions, Mist was the best,” de Vogel says.
The Mist Platform ensures that Koppert has a modern, future-oriented wireless network that will serve both its business and warehouse operations.
Koppert’s wired network was already powered by Juniper Networks EX2300 Ethernet Switches and protected by Juniper Networks SRX300 line of Services Gateways. Built-in integrations between Mist wireless and Juniper wired solutions simplify operations by giving network administrators visibility into both networks from a single dashboard.
“A single network operations platform gives us lots more information and details that help pinpoint what is going on in the network,” says Fer Wijker, coordinator, infrastructure team at Koppert. He also enjoys having a single vendor for both networks. “Having everything from one provider has led to much better support. With the proactive insight and automatic root cause determination that the AI delivers, we are able to resolve issues quickly and easily make improvements across the wired and wireless networks.”
Koppert turned to global integrator Nomios to design and implement the new Mist Wireless LAN Platform, along with Wired Assurance and Marvis Virtual Network Assistant. Nomios installed more than 300 access points in the company’s Netherlands head office and warehouse.
Wired Assurance provides AI-powered automation and service levels for Koppert’s EX Series switches as well as the Mist access points. Service-level expectations are measured and administrators are proactively notified if there’s a deviation in switch performance—before users notice. The root cause of wired and wireless problems is quickly identified and, with self-driving remediation, Wired Assurance can take automated actions such as adding missing VLAN configurations or correcting switch port misconfigurations.
As global food demand increases, Koppert is continuously looking for new solutions to support growers across the world. Bumblebees, beneficial insects, microbial products, sticky traps, and pheromone traps are a more sustainable way to control pests and diseases, encourage pollination, and promote crop growth and resilience.
The efficiencies and warehouse improvements realized at its Netherlands headquarters will spread to the company’s distribution centers when the global rollout of Mist wireless and Juniper wired is complete.
“Wireless network performance has been exceptional, and we’re looking forward to rolling the Mist network out across all our warehouses.”
“The proven solutions of Juniper AI-driven networking will take us into our next phase of business development,” Wijker says.
The Products
Wired Assurance
The Juniper Mist Wired Assurance service brings Mist AI to access-layer switching. It sets a new network management standard with AI-native operations and automation, improving the experiences of devices connected to resources through Juniper EX Series Switches.
Wireless (Wi-Fi) Assurance
Driven by Mist AI and machine learning, the Juniper Mist Wireless Assurance cloud service automates troubleshooting and operations, making wireless networks predictable, reliable, and measurable while providing near-real-time visibility into user service levels.
EX2300
The EX2300 Ethernet Switch delivers a compact, high-density, cost-effective solution for small network environments where space and power are at a premium.
Published July 2020