Safely flexible

Cross-location networking that efficiently integrates cloud services, ensures secure data transfers and is also easy to manage and easy to customise – this is what many medium-sized companies want. The waste disposal company Scholz Recycling has achieved this – with the SD-WAN-based "Connected Business" solution from Vodafone.

The Challenge

Networking different facilities – but how?

As a waste disposal partner to various industrial companies, Scholz Recycling has to be close to its customers on site. This is why the Group operates 53 facilities in Germany alone. The employees at these locations need to be connected to the company headquarters in Essingen and require fast and stable internet connections for their day-to-day work – for example for video conferences, access to the group's central ERP system, and to use software applications such as Microsoft 365. The fleet of vehicles used to collect and transport the scrap is managed centrally and digitally.

In addition, Scholz Recycling is also facing challenges that have become commonplace in the economy, such as high energy costs and a shortage of skilled workers, to which the company is responding with systematic digitalisation. Environmental certifications and insurance requirements have also led to increasing demands on IT security. On top of this came the growing demand for bandwidth. These factors prompted Scholz Recycling to fundamentally improve its IT and network infrastructure. To carry out this project, Scholz Recycling decided to work with Vodafone as its digitalisation partner.

The Company

Waste management company with a long history

Scholz Recycling's roots go back to 1872, when Paul Scholz opened a small sorting company in Lower Silesia. At the beginning of the 1960s, the company moved its headquarters to Essingen in Baden-Württemberg. Today, the Scholz Group has around 3,400 employees and supplies hundreds of steelworks, foundries and smelting works worldwide as a supplier of secondary raw material scrap. The Group has also made a name for itself with its waste disposal, service and logistics concepts. Since December 2016, the Scholz Group has been wholly owned by CHIHO Environmental Group (CEG), an importer of mixed scrap metals.

The Solution

Secure, efficient and transparent corporate network

Scholz Recycling is relying on Vodafone's Connected Business to fulfil the requirements for higher bandwidths, greater reliability and more security for its internet connections. The project started in the autumn of 2023 and all of the Group's German facilities were to be converted to Connected Business within a year. As part of the implementation, the internet connections at some locations were also improved or expanded.

Connected Business makes it possible to use and combine different access technologies – in addition to traditional fixed network access such as DSL, broadband cable and fibre optics, also mobile communications (LTE/5G). If a single line fails, a fallback connection can be activated within a very short time. As part of the changeover, all routers, switches and access points at the locations were replaced. The connections are monitored by Vodafone, and the IT department at Scholz Recycling, headed by Axel Seibold, can view the current status of the individual connections at any time via a dashboard. As all applications are stored in the cloud, there is no data centre at the company headquarters in Essingen, Baden-Württemberg, which the other sites would have to access. The company headquarters therefore have the same status in the network as all other company locations.

"We have enjoyed a close and good working relationship with Vodafone for many years," reports Axel Seibold, Head of IT at Scholz Recycling GmbH. "They always respond quickly and precisely to our requirements. The resulting relationship of trust made it obvious that we should also cooperate with Vodafone in the reorganisation of our network." 

The Advantages

Integrated, centralised networking 

The individual sites of Scholz Recycling GmbH are connected via different Internet accesses – from DSL to broadband cable and fibre optics to mobile communications, whereby almost all relevant variants are used. Connected Business from Vodafone integrates these heterogeneous Internet accesses into a centralised management and monitoring platform. If an individual line fails, a fallback connection can be activated within a very short time.

As Head of IT at Scholz Recycling GmbH, Axel Seibold is responsible for the IT and networking of the company headquarters and all of the company's branches. We spoke to him about the opportunities of digitalisation and the benefits of connected business. 

What role does digitalisation play in your business?

Axel Seibold: Our core business is still very much manual. A lot of manual labour is involved in collecting, sorting and transporting scrap. Nevertheless, digital solutions play a very important role in the background. Examples of this include the digital scheduling of our own vehicle fleet, the digital processing of transport orders and the cloud-based software infrastructure. This also includes camera solutions and IoT sensors in the handling equipment – i.e. excavators, industrial trucks and systems – on the sites.

How did you implement these requirements technically?

Axel Seibold: We systematically invest in the cloud. Here, too, the range is broad, from Microsoft 365 to scheduling and merchandise management through to the analysis platforms for IoT solutions. The Connected Business realised together with Vodafone also ultimately belongs to this category.

What specific advantages does Connected Business offer you?

Axel Seibold: The segmentation of our company network realised with Connected Business helps us to implement security requirements. In addition, a backup connection can be activated in the shortest possible time in the event of disruptions or Internet connection failures. This ultimately enables us to fulfil quality parameters and SLAs that were not available with the previous MPLS-based solution.

What impact does this have on the employees in your company and the applications they use?

Axel Seibold: Where the changeover has already been completed, we are receiving extremely positive feedback. Colleagues praise the greater stability and speed of the internet connections used. This has clearly increased the efficiency of processes throughout the company.

How do you rate the cooperation with Vodafone?

Axel Seibold: Tackling this extensive project together with Vodafone Business as our digitalisation partner has proved to be an absolute success. The division of labour between the Vodafone experts and us works smoothly. Vodafone registers the devices involved in its cloud and initiates the monitoring, while we in the IT department have an overview of the status of all network connections involved at all times via the provided dashboard.

For a long time, networking several locations over a wide geographical area to form a wide area network (WAN) was associated with considerable costs and technical hurdles. These challenges meant that such networks were usually reserved for large corporations or public institutions.

However, this has changed fundamentally over the last ten years: With the introduction of software-defined networking technology for WANs (Software-Defined Networking WAN, or SD-WAN for short), a cost-effective and efficient solution is now available. This enables even small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to effectively network their locations – be it offices, production facilities, sales branches or logistics centres.

The following five benefits show why SD-WAN is considered a key technology for future-orientated business models and applications:

Conclusion: Efficient networking helps SMEs to optimise their processes, increase customer satisfaction and arm themselves effectively against security risks.

Would you like to network your company sustainably and take it to a new level? We would be happy to advise you!