At Sanmina, ChromeOS checks every box for cost, flexibility, and easy maintenance

Editor's note: Today’s post is by Manesh Patel, Senior Vice President and CIO for Sanmina, a global supply chain manager and manufacturer of high-reliability products in industries such as communications, medical, defense, and aerospace. Sanmina is using ChromeOS to manage critical operations processes and improve employee efficiency.

Sanmina products are complex and often perform critical roles in sensitive healthcare and defense settings. That’s why we seek out collaboration solutions with high reliability and quality control, since equipping workers with accurate information to and from the factory floor is essential. In our office settings, employees also need collaboration tools to help improve global operations and streamline complex design processes.

For these reasons, we consider every IT adoption plan from three critical angles: total cost of ownership, speed, and flexibility. The Sanmina operating systems are a very important part of our manufacturing operations. Managing these systems is a big challenge for us, and our focus is to do that as efficiently as we can and keep the total cost to a minimum.

With ChromeOS, we met all three of our requirements—cost, speed, and flexibility.

Ease of maintenance and zero downtime for our 24/7 manufacturing operations

The Sanmina manufacturing facilities operate 24/7 across 20 countries. The longer the uptime, the better we can serve our customers, so we try to minimize IT support or security issues that adversely affect facility performance. Thankfully, ChromeOS has built in security which has prevented us from having a single security incident in the past 10 years. 

Once we adopted ChromeOS and deployed over 10,000 ChromeOS devices in our manufacturing plants and operations offices, IT maintenance has essentially disappeared, reducing total cost of ownership and support costs by 50%. Sanmina is keen to replace another 10,000 Windows computers with ChromeOS devices in our device fleet. Because many of our applications were written for Windows, we are utilizing virtual application delivery with Cameyo, which lets ChromeOS users access Windows applications on their devices as if the apps are installed locally.

Adopting ChromeOS throughout the company

To support Sanmina employees in many different roles, we chose a variety of ChromeOS devices. Chromebases replaced old desktops in offices, and Chromeboxes are used on our production floor for digital signage. ChromeOS-powered digital signage has allowed us to go fully paperless. With ChromeOS and Comeen Play, we can share real-time purchasing and part quality information directly from the factory floor to Sanmina administration, helping our managers make better decisions in real time. The screens also help share information with employees on factory floors and in our cafeterias, keeping people up to date on productivity metrics and progress towards company goals.

We continue to find new ways to bring ChromeOS into more parts of Sanmina’s operations. ChromeOS devices, including tablets, are provided to mobile or remote workers. We’ve also deployed ChromeOS Flex for devices on the production floor, allowing us to repurpose and extend the lifespan of existing hardware.

In terms of security, quality, and flexibility, ChromeOS empowers our employees to work faster and more efficiently—and makes their jobs much easier. Our customers rely on the critical products Sanmina provides. In turn, we rely on ChromeOS.