How do 13,000 devices pass the -20°C Winter Exam? Lenovo gave its own secret

Products for Winter Olympic applications

More than a month has passed since the end of the Winter Olympics, but everyone still has a deep impression of the Winter Olympics, such as the mascot ice pier is still in the state of rushing to buy and pre-sale, and many winter sports are also maintaining high heat. Looking back at the highlights of this Winter Olympics, there are both creative and visual opening and closing ceremonies, as well as venues blessed by various black technologies and highlight moments of athletes.

But for the story behind this grand event, few people know, "Today we brought a lot of equipment to serve the Winter Olympics to the scene, and the staff and these equipment have just ended their isolation, and I believe that everyone is also the first off-site audience to be able to access these equipment for the Winter Olympic Games." Lenovo PCSD product quality management director Li Jicheng said.

430 engineers supported the 0-fault Winter Olympics

Li Jicheng, Director of Product Quality Management at Lenovo PCSD

At Lenovo's Headquarters in Beijing, the author saw a row of devices that were inconspicuous in appearance, and this was the "protagonist" that Li Inherit said was serving the Winter Olympics. These devices include printers, notebook computers, all-in-one computers, workstations and servers, etc., from the appearance point of view, compared with commercially available products, their biggest difference is that the logo of some devices is obscured.

At the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Lenovo provided more than 13,000 products and more than 430 engineers, and carried out comprehensive technical support and service guarantees and services for 40 venues and service facilities. In addition to the various types of hardware provided by Lenovo, on-site engineers will provide technical support for some of the products carried by the athletes themselves.

According to Wang Lei, general manager of Lenovo's Olympic business, Lenovo has become the largest sponsor as early as 2001 when Beijing bid for the Olympic Games, and then with high-performance equipment and technical strength, Lenovo undertook IT operation and maintenance work at the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics and the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics respectively.

Wang Lei, General Manager of Lenovo Olympic Business

In addition, Lenovo is also the IT operations supplier of the Expo and has maintained a work record of zero failures in these activities. The personnel system and service plan established by Lenovo to serve these large-scale activities and large-scale events also provide a basis for it to participate in the maintenance work of the Beijing Winter Olympics.

At the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, lenovo's event technical team has formed a total of 7 personnel organization collaboration modules involving project management, IT operation design and planning, implementation planning and management, call center construction and management, venue operation planning and management, TOC (technical operation center) construction and operation support, operation team planning training and personnel delivery management, which together run through the whole process of IT operation and maintenance pre-planning, project delivery and execution and operation management.

In terms of technical service solutions, Lenovo's Winter Olympics technical service solutions include three modules: DaaS/desktop operation and maintenance services, venue IT integration/operation and maintenance services, and the design and planning of the overall IT operation and maintenance guarantee system of the Winter Olympics, of which the venue IT system integration and event operation and maintenance guarantee are very critical, covering the integrated implementation management services, the deployment and debugging of test venues, the centralized deployment and implementation of venues, the demolition and recycling of venues after the games, and the multi-level guarantee system of event operation and maintenance.

Equipment for participation in the Winter Olympics

At the event, Wang Lei mentioned a specific case, when foreign athletes enter the country by plane, they have been included in the entire information management system when they enter the airport, and from this moment on, the athletes' itinerary, the vehicles to be taken, the planning of the residence, the event time, and the event results must be synchronized in real time on the cloud.

Behind this is a set of complex systems, that is, the Olympic information release cloud platform built by Lenovo, including collaborative management GMS (Sports Games Management Information System), CIS (Commentator Information System), INFO (Media Broadcasting System), OMS (Olympic Management System), PRD (Score Scoring System), Competition Achievement Service System, Olympic Information Release System and so on.

At the Beijing Winter Olympics, Lenovo provided IT technology equipment for the competition also covered the core areas of the seven Olympic information systems such as the timing and scoring system, the commentator information system, the field performance system, and the competition management system, providing IT services for more than 15,000 athletes, 20,000 media personnel, and 100,000 volunteers.

Use technology to control and cope with extreme environments

Quality standard system

In order to ensure the stable and reliable quality of the products used in the Winter Olympics, in the quality management of the Winter Olympics, Lenovo has also set up a strict quality control process, and established standardized implementation steps from scene confirmation, risk identification, simulation testing, debugging improvement, production and supply, and after-sales guarantee.

First of all, the quality management team will assess the risk points in the application environment according to the model, environmental factors, machine quality resume and other factors, such as extreme weather conditions such as low temperature and high humidity, conduct simulation tests, and debug and improve the corresponding models, and then enter the production and supply process.

In the production and supply process, the quality management team will not only focus on tracking the assembly and testing process, but also specially increase the OOB (unboxing) sampling ratio to ensure that the product quality is safe and controllable. Entering the after-sales guarantee stage, lenovo's IT operation and maintenance team ensures that the equipment can be repaired or replaced in time when responding to emergencies by preparing machines, using cleaning methods, completing maintenance accessories, and setting up a 24-hour support team.

In addition, lenovo also did a lot of work in the preparatory preparations for the Winter Olympics, starting the testing and delivery of equipment in Europe from June 2020, and in the past two years, 23 test matches were deployed before the games, as well as system tuning, venue operation design and other work. During the operation stage of the competition, Lenovo integrated the deployment of 11 competition venues and 27 non-competition venues, and did targeted epidemic prevention and logistics support work.

Waterproof test

One of the characteristics of the Winter Olympics that is different from ordinary events or activities is that electronic equipment is mostly used in low temperature and humid environments, and Lenovo also demonstrated the waterproof technology developed by Lenovo to cope with this environment. Li said: "This technology uses the water resistance of hydrophobic agents, which can delay the time when water enters the inside of the film from the cross-section of the three layers of the film, and has been tested for waterproofing and moisture resistance." “

The experimental results show that the keyboard equipped with waterproof technology can be soaked in 60 °C constant temperature water for 1 hour, and can resist humidity of 98%, and can still be continuously tapped in the water at 50 °C. This technology has also been applied to many products that appeared at the Winter Olympics, such as thinkPad L13 Yoga, which can ensure normal use and normal work in a low temperature environment of -20 ° C after actual use.

Hu Nan, technical manager of Lenovo's Olympic business department, also shared his feelings about experiencing the Winter Olympics: "For sports events, technical service guarantee work must be in place on time and accurate, and unlike many venue activities, there is no chance of rehearsal and repetition in the event.

I have carried out up to 30 venue changes in this Winter Olympics, involving ice surfaces, photographic points, timing and scoring, temporary facilities and other links, which require the close cooperation of 200 people in the entire business team to complete it smoothly within 2 hours. ”

Judging from the final results, Lenovo still completed the task of IT operation and maintenance of the Winter Olympics efficiently and accurately, but this will not be the end of the project. The service of large-scale activities again and again is accumulating experience for Lenovo, whether it is at the technical level or the personnel and organizational level, and successfully passing the "big test" of the Winter Olympics is only to set a higher starting point for the next service of large-scale events and activities. (This article was first published on titanium media App)