Requests from staff
One number for the office and for the shift leader, with priorities kept apart. A stopped line and mail not arriving are not the same matter and cannot sit in one queue.
Kalisz and Ostrów Wielkopolski form an area of nearly 382 thousand people with an economy unlike any other in the region: aviation, food processing, automation and machinery. That means a great many companies supplying somebody larger. And a supplier has one distinctive feature in IT: its safeguards are judged not only by its own board but by its customer, in writing.
If you work only in an office and nobody asks about security in your contracts, this page covers more than you need. Start from a plain IT support retainer instead, because both the scope and the price will be different. The sections below are written for manufacturers and distributors with a shop floor, a warehouse or a demanding buyer.
In a supply chain, requirements travel downwards. A large plant that has to account for something itself passes it on to suppliers through a clause in the contract.
Dozens of questions about backups, permissions, updates, incident reporting and who is answerable for IT at your place. Most of them cannot be answered by the bookkeeper or the production manager, and the deadline to return it is often a week.
The amended Polish cybersecurity act tells key entities to watch the security of their suppliers. You may not be covered by the rules directly and will still receive their wording as an annex to a purchase order.
Drawings, processes and recipes belonging to a customer usually come with a clause on who may open them and how long you keep them. Without separated permissions and an access log there is no way to show it, and that is the first thing an audit looks at.
Our part here is simple and we would rather spell it out. We fill such a questionnaire in with you according to the facts, mark the entries where the answer is no, and quote what it takes to close them. We do not paper over an answer that would not survive an audit, because that ends worse than an honest we are working on it, due by such and such a date. More about the rules themselves is on the page about a secure company network.
Equipment standing next to a machine follows different rules from the bookkeepers computer. A firm that only handles offices usually comes unstuck here.
A machine tool worth a million zloty can be driven by a system out of support for years, with a maker who will not allow it to be swapped. Such a computer is not updated but cut off from the rest of the network, with a watch kept on what leaves it.
Scanners on trucks, terminals by the lines, and dust, sheet metal and racking damping the signal. Coverage has to be planned from a survey rather than by eye, because a scanner dropping its connection stops goods leaving the warehouse.
When a plant runs three shifts or continuously, there is no night left for restarting a server. Work is then timed around the production plan, sometimes weeks ahead, and that timing has to hold.
One thing follows from this that is worth knowing before any talk of price: in a manufacturing company the first review takes longer than in an office, because somebody has to walk the floor and write down what is actually connected. We usually find a few devices nobody remembered, with open access from outside. Plants running at night are also offered cover outside business hours. If there is a warehouse with terminals next to the plant, coverage between the racks is a separate subject and we describe it under IT support for warehouses.
Six areas of ongoing support, arranged for a company that has an office and a production line under one tax number.
One number for the office and for the shift leader, with priorities kept apart. A stopped line and mail not arriving are not the same matter and cannot sit in one queue.
Production separated from the office and from guests, managed switches, and access points placed according to a survey rather than to whichever socket was free.
The server carrying the ERP or warehouse system run so that it can be restarted in a planned window and rebuilt on another machine when it fails.
A copy at your place, a second off site and a regular restore test. In a buyer audit it is the first question, and in a ransomware case the only thing that matters.
Protection for computers and servers, order in the accounts and a record of who reaches the customers documents. Three things every security questionnaire asks about.
Keeping the trade system running on the infrastructure side, dealing with its maker, and making sure an update does not land in the middle of a shift.
What we do not do: we do not program machine controllers and do not go into industrial automation, because that is a separate trade and the line maker is there for it. We answer for the network, servers, workstations and data, meaning whatever joins the machines to the rest of the company, and for talking to the automation supplier when it has to be settled whose side a fault is on.
The first visit is always in person, because a shop floor cannot be seen through a remote desktop. After that most of the work moves onto the network.
We drive to Kalisz, look at the server room, the cabinets on the floor and the desks, list the hardware and check what still has maker support. We also ask about customer contracts, because half the requirements come from there.
You get a description of the actual state split into what risks a stoppage, what would not pass a buyer audit and what can wait. Every entry has a cost and a date, so you choose the order yourselves.
We list the credentials, document the configuration, start the monitoring and close the urgent items. Anything touching production is planned into windows agreed with the shift manager, never sprung on anybody.
Requests handled remotely as they come, trips at an agreed frequency, a report each month. Notice is one month, with no penalty and no withholding of credentials.
Te same narzędzia prowadzimy u klientów w Kalisz i w pozostałych miastach, w których pracujemy. Każda strona mówi, co dokładnie z danym systemem robimy.
Potrzeby zależą bardziej od branży niż od adresu. Zobacz, jak wygląda obsługa IT w firmach takich jak Twoja.
Od sieci i serwerów po systemy, helpdesk i automatyzację. Wchodzimy w całość albo w jeden obszar, zależnie od tego, czego brakuje.
The pages that come back in conversations with a manufacturer.
Yes, we do it regularly and it is often the first thing that brings us together. We go through the questions one by one, describe the actual state and mark plainly where the answer is no, together with a date for putting it right. Experience shows buyers accept a plan with a date, while a falsehood they discover is treated as grounds for ending the relationship.
You are about a hundred and twenty five kilometres away on a route with no motorway, so the real driving time is over two hours and we will not pretend otherwise. We answer a critical request remotely within thirty minutes, and we buy hardware with a maker warranty covering repair at your site so that a failure does not wait for our car. Our own trip is planned for the next business day.
Yes, the whole Kalisz-Ostrów area is one territory for us, including Ostrów Wielkopolski, Pleszew, Nowe Skalmierzyce, Opatówek, Odolanów and the smaller councils around them. If your plant is in Kalisz and the warehouse a dozen kilometres away, we cover both under one contract and in one register of requests.
That is the commonest situation in the plants we talk to, and it is not solved by updating. We move such a computer into a separate part of the network, cut its access to the internet and to office resources, leave only the connections it needs to work, and take a disk image so it can be rebuilt after a failure without the maker. The risk stays, but it stops involving the whole company.
It does, and in manufacturing it is the commonest arrangement. Your person knows the floor, the people and the machines, which nobody from outside will make up for, while we take on servers, the network, security and cover during holidays. We then split the scope in writing, because without that both sides assume the other one is handling something.
Anything touching the network or the servers is planned into windows agreed with the shift manager, with a written note on what we do if something does not come back. For continuous operations we agree the timing well ahead, sometimes weeks, and we keep to it. A stoppage can be foreseen, and then it costs hours rather than days.
The starting point is 2 500 PLN a month, but in a plant the price is driven less by the number of computers than by the number of devices on the network and the hours of cover required. Thirty office desks, and thirty desks plus a line with terminals, are two different quotes. We give a firm figure after the first visit, because anything earlier would be guessing.
The first meeting takes 30 minutes and commits you to nothing. We will tell you straight whether we can help and what we would propose.
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