In the 1990's, when parts of Tampella were divested, the boiler business ended up in Norwegian ownership. A little over a year ago, Metso acquired the boiler unit back to Finland from Aker Kvaerner. The acquisition brought some 750 new workstations to Metso.

The process of incorporating Metso Power in Metso's Patja service was started right after the acquisition. The schedule was agreed upon right in the first meeting and it was adhered to all through the project. Metso Power entered the Patja service at the beginning of October 2007.

IT manager Risto Lahti of Metso Power was happy to see that the Metso Power staff was informed of the transition to the 4114 service well in advance and thoroughly. All in all, the process of joining Metso Power in the common system was quite effortless.

”Silence is always a good sign. It's a clear indication that there have been no major problems,” says director Pekka Pajalahti of Metso IT.

Previously, some members of Metso Power staff used to serve as IT support persons, taking turns in being on-call. The 4114 service has freed up their time to be spent in a more productive way.

Leaving woes behind

The IT infrastructure services of the Metso group have been in Fujitsu's care since 2003. Metso's Patja service also includes various workstation- and printer- related services, such as availability and on-site support services. The service is called the 4114 service according to the helpdesk phone number.

 ”We embarked upon collaborating with Fujitsu to find a solution to our situation where our IT processes were very incoherent and uncoordinated,” Pekka Pajalahti says. The company had then several agreements with various IT service suppliers – among them Fujitsu, and certain basic IT-related services were managed in-house.

Outsourcing IT routines to Fujitsu has provided the Metso group staff with better IT services and more time for productive work.

”The greatest advantage in this is that our staff no longer need to grapple with the routines, and we can rely on Fujitsu to solve any problems that may come along,”, Pajalahti says.

Metso purchases computers to all of its European units through Fujitsu who also takes care of pre-installing the software in them. Metso Power will also have their computers pre-installed by Fujitsu as soon as other elements of the integration process into the Metso systems have advanced further.