Case Study: Evolution of the PSB Integration Platform at Škoda Auto – Greater Stability, Automation, and Better Log Routing

[.infobox][.infobox-heading]Key benefits[.infobox-heading]– Cost savings in support
– Automation in incident targeting
– Greater platform stability
– More precise system communication
– 24/7 support with a short response time
[.infobox]

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The PSB platform, which Škoda Auto has been using for many years, is a key element for ensuring proper communication between individual systems. As technological demands and accuracy requirements continue to increase, the platform must be continuously enriched with new technologies, updated, and innovated (for example, 150 million messages now pass through it every day). In the environment of an automotive manufacturer, where any implementation or change is very demanding, this represents a major challenge for both sides.

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Challenge: Modernizing a critical platform in a high-availability manufacturing environment

In such a demanding production environment, system updates are complex - any intervention in production or production systems can create a risk of production stoppage, and even a brief interruption can have a major impact on production continuity.

However, thanks to our knowledge of the environment, long-term cooperation, experience, and professional approach, we were able to improve the platform and gradually implement new technologies.

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Evolution: Platform improvements and automated log routing

A key element in this "evolution," as we call it, is incident automation using the Splunk platform (a monitoring application that collects logs), which enables more precise targeting between individual systems and reduces false-positive incidents.

Whenever an incident appears between systems, the application can immediately evaluate the relevant criteria and route it to the correct resolver group. The new solution streamlines incident routing to the correct resolver group, significantly reducing resolution time for all parties involved and optimizing costs.

The improvements bring:

• Greater stability of the integration platform.
• Automated incident routing.
• Reduction of false-positive incidents.
• A shift to infrastructure as code - simplifying potential disaster recovery (DR).
• Containerization - better scalability and no-downtime deployment during production.

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“PSB is now an indispensable part of production at Škoda Auto. And our journey has shown that even a stable integration platform can be the foundation for innovation in a complex environment.”  

— Vojtěch Král, Integration Services Manager, Trask

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Benefits for the client: Greater stability and more efficient communication between production systems

The above brings the client several important benefits:

• Stable AMS team costs despite the growing number of integrations.
• The ability to deploy without downtime during production.
• Faster incident handling.
• Confidence in fast production recovery in the event of an outage and stabilization of the support mode.
• Strengthened trust in a long-term IT partner.

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Connecting technologies across pillars is the key element

• Apache Kafka – a distributed streaming platform that enables reliable, high-speed transfer and storage of data streams between different systems in real time.
• Azure API Gateway (Azure API Management) – a service that acts as a central entry point for APIs and ensures security, access control, monitoring, and management.
• IBM ACE – a platform for implementing integration services (we implement REST services and MQ/MQTT communication, while at this layer we perform orchestration, mapping, or message filtering when needed).
• Amlen broker for MQTT communication – used for the publish-subscribe pattern.
• IBM MQ – message-based communication with an emphasis on data persistence.

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Looking ahead: AI for better data analysis

Artificial intelligence not only helps us with service implementation, but we also plan to use it further for documentation generation, which is a demanding process within PSB, and for more efficient analysis of the individual pieces of information that flow through PSB. This will lead to further optimization of their forwarding.

„Trask is our long-term integration partner. The experts in the team are responsible for the communication between the production systems. Together with colleagues from Trask, we develop the integration platform and ensure maximum availability. I believe that our cooperation will continue for a long time to come.“

— Jozef Brziak, IT Product Manager, Škoda Auto

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About Škoda Auto

Škoda Auto is the largest Czech automotive manufacturer and a key industrial company. As part of the Volkswagen Group, it operates complex production and logistics environments where system availability, precise integration, and stable incident handling are critical to manufacturing continuity.

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