VIP Industries: Preparing for Global Growth

VIP Industries switched to digital workflows on an infrastructure powered by 2nd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors.

At a glance:

  • VIP Industries is one of Asia’s leading manufacturers of travel bags, with more than 100 million units sold worldwide. Managing a portfolio of luggage brands, the company goes to market via its own chain of stores.

  • The company sought to improve the accuracy of its demand forecasts. The aim was to optimize its production plans to ensure that it could deliver the right quantity of each product at the right time to capture every sales opportunity.

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Since it was founded in 1971 in Mumbai, India, VIP Industries has grown to become one of Asia’s leading manufacturers of travel bags, with more than 100 million units sold worldwide. Managing a portfolio of luggage brands including VIP, Aristocrat, Alfa, Footloose, Skybags, and Carlton, the company goes to market via its own chain of stores.

Growth Goals

Through its constant focus on product quality, VIP Industries has driven significant growth, creating new business imperatives for the company. In addition to ramping up its manufacturing, the company sought to improve the accuracy of its demand forecasts. The aim was to optimize its production plans to ensure that it could deliver the right quantity of each product at the right time to capture every sales opportunity.

Vineet Agarwal, Head of IT Infrastructure at VIP Industries, takes up the story: “Like many leading retailers, we have embarked on a far-reaching digital transformation initiative. As a first step on that journey, we integrated our operations from end-to-end using digital business processes.”

Removing Bottlenecks

Next, VIP Industries turned its attention to its distribution centers in India. In the past, the company relied on a legacy system to manage inventory and dispatch orders to its retail network. During peak periods such as month-end and major retail holidays, this system made it difficult for warehouse teams to meet their service-level targets.

In response, VIP Industries decided to replace the legacy system with a digital warehouse management solution. The new application would enable warehouse personnel to rapidly scan goods in and out using hand-held barcode readers.

“Previously, we operated a distributed, heterogeneous x86 landscape for our line-of-business applications, but we knew that this platform would be unable to deliver the low latency we needed for the new warehouse management solution,” comments Agarwal. “Instead, we targeted a new, high-performance infrastructure.”

Why Lenovo? Dependable Performance and Ultra-Low Latency

After evaluating proposals from a number of leading IT vendors, VIP Industries selected an all-flash hyperconverged infrastructure solution from Lenovo and Nutanix. Based on four Lenovo ThinkAgile HX3320 appliances, each equipped with two Intel® Xeon® Silver 4215 eight-core processors, and two Lenovo ThinkSystem NE1032T RackSwitch switches, the new platform is virtualized with Nutanix Enterprise Cloud and managed using Nutanix Prism and Lenovo XClarity.

“In addition to implementing the warehouse management system, we wanted to migrate a number of other satellite applications to the new hyperconverged platform,” explains Agarwal. “These applications included business intelligence and analytics tools, as well as a specialist goods and service taxes reporting solution to meet the digital business requirements of the Indian government.”

He continues: “Of all the solutions we considered, we felt that the Lenovo and Nutanix offering delivered the best performance, technology, and support.”

He continues: “We were already using Lenovo solutions in other parts of the business, so we knew we could count on the quality of their solutions. And because the ThinkAgile HX platform features 2nd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, we knew that it would deliver the high levels of performance that we needed.”

Seamless Deployment

Working together with Lenovo Deployment Services and Lenovo Partner Pentagon Systems and Services, VIP Industries deployed the new hyperconverged infrastructure to a co-location data center in India.

“This was one of the smoothest IT deployments I’ve ever been involved with, and we were delighted with the close and effective collaboration between Lenovo and Pentagon Systems and Services,” adds Agarwal. “After just two days, our new ThinkAgile HX platform was live and ready for production workloads—an outstanding result.”

Transforming the Business

With a hyperconverged infrastructure at the foundation of its digital transformation initiative, VIP Industries has gained the performance, availability, and scalability to switch its warehouse management processes to the digital channel.

“Our warehouse teams can now rapidly track, manage and dispatch our inventory using barcode scanners and tablet devices,” comments Agarwal. “Thanks to the ThinkAgile HX solution, we can eliminate the risk of our warehouses becoming a bottleneck as the business continues to grow.”

By using Nutanix Prism and Lenovo XClarity to orchestrate its hyperconverged infrastructure, VIP Industries is making significant time-savings on IT management and maintenance compared to the previous x86 environment.

“Our hyperconverged infrastructure is extremely easy to manage, and the performance and reliability of the platform have met and exceeded all of our initial expectations,” says Agarwal.

He concludes: “At VIP Industries, we see that digital transformation is a prerequisite for continued business expansion. Thanks to our hyperconverged infrastructure from Lenovo and Nutanix, we have a platform that will support our growth ambitions for years to come.”

Thanks to our hyperconverged infrastructure from Lenovo and Nutanix, we have a platform that will support our growth ambitions for years to come.”

Vineet Agarwal, Head of IT Infrastructure, VIP Industries