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Product category: Plant- and Machine-Wide Communications
News Release from: Lantronix | Subject: Industrial device networking
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial Team on 24 January 2007

The world of industrial device
networking

Industrial device networking can revolutionise the world of industrial manufacturing, says Lantronix Senior Field Applications Engineer Gary Marrs.

More and more companies are adopting some form of automation whether it is within their offices or manufacturing facilities Companies see automation as a way to reduce costs, increase access to information when needed, and improve productivity

Companies have already realised increased productivity just by networking their computers and printers within their offices.

In the realm of manufacturing, connecting previously isolated equipment to a network gives managers real-time access to information from their manufacturing facility for improved management and decision-making.

In their quest to improve productivity and quality, manufacturers need to remotely monitor and control their manufacturing equipment such as programmable logic controllers, robots, process control equipment, motor drive controllers, power monitoring equipment, flow meters, gas detection devices, temperature monitoring systems, barcode scanners, scales and mixing stations.

Currently, factory managers must be onsite to monitor and maintain control; however, managers can access this information from their internal network or via the Internet using industrial device networking.

Managers can be automatically notified of equipment readings that are out of the normal operating range and then they can initiate troubleshooting of production equipment, even if the managers are located outside the factory.

Industrial manufacturers require networking products that are rugged, easy-to-customise to their individual circumstances, and cost-effective yet are capable of connecting, communicating information and controlling virtually any type of equipment in an industrial environment.

To enable remote monitoring and managing, manufacturers can place their equipment on an existing local area network (LAN) or on the Internet using industrial device networking.

For products to operate in harsh industrial environments, they must withstand and operate reliably under extreme temperatures and vibration, and resist the effects of exposure to electrical interference.

There is also considerable potential for noise interference which can cause communications latency and transmission retries.

While operating in these somewhat hostile environments, networking products must offer security and encryption to prevent another type of "interference" such as unauthorised access, compromised data integrity or attacks that may result in halting the system.

For any factory manager, it is his/her primary goal to maintain a consistent level of quality as well as meet the production volumes of the goods produced.

Without having real-time access to information from the equipment within a manufacturing facility, managers must manually gather the necessary information that they need to make responsible decisions to maintain production and quality levels.

If factory equipment is working improperly or is outside of its normal range of operation, the manager and his/her staff must manually monitor these machines to determine where the problem exists.

Sometimes a factory will use PCs to perform this monitoring function; however, managers often times encounter trouble with maintaining PCs on the factory floor due to the harsh conditions that exist in most factories.

Equipped with device information in real time, managers can gain improved and consistent system performance, all contributing to better product quality and achieving production schedules.

Managers can also automate their quality control using device networking by ensuring that the critical parameters of their factory systems are monitored and maintained within appropriate ranges.

This monitoring, maintenance and even troubleshooting of production equipment can be conducted remotely.

Industrial device networking products must be built to operate in harsh, extreme environments and support standard communication protocols.

This networking also allows managers to leverage their existing network wiring and corporate IP networks.

To access the networked devices via the Internet, these networking products should have a built-in web server to allow users to remotely access and manage the attached equipment using a standard Web browser.

Multiple industrial serial devices can also be cascaded from a single network backbone connection eliminating the need for expensive hubs and cabling.

Industrial equipment can be quickly and easily networked using a device server.

The device server is a complete network enabling solution enclosed in a ruggedised RJ45 or external box package that can create a networked environment from simple serial data.

The adoption of industrial device networking is increasing because it provides the ability to interactively access, evaluate and utilise data from networked equipment via a LAN or the Internet.

Industry analysts expect the use of device networking especially in industrial environments to grow 44% in the next five years.

Device networking includes both wired and wireless technologies.

A recent ARC Advisory Group study indicates that the worldwide market for the use of wireless technology in manufacturing is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 26% during the next five years.

Ethernet is an established networking standard, robust and reliable enough to support industrial networking.

It is also rapidly gaining momentum in industrial automation because it is an open standard, fast, can support multiple fieldbus protocols simultaneously and can leverage existing equipment and IT tools.

To connect nonnetworked equipment to a LAN or the Internet, manufacturers are depending on Ethernet and 802.11.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) established a family of wireless local area network (WLAN) standards, known as 802.11.

There are many versions of the 802.11 standard.

The two that are most widely used are 802.11b and 802.11g.

The 802.11b offers wireless transmissions of up to 11 megabits per second while 802.11g offers wireless transmission at up to 54 megabits per second.

Both 802.11b and 802.11g operate in the 2.4GHz range.

802.11g is backward compatible with 802.11b equipment.

Wireless technology has revolutionised how computer users access information.

And this revolution continues in the world of manufacturing.

Wireless device networking is the best alternative when it is impractical or cost prohibitive to run cabling to connect factory equipment to a LAN or the Internet.

Wireless reduces the need for expensive wiring which can account for two-thirds of the total cost of an installation in a factory.

In installing a wireless network, managers need to consider the physical layout and sise of the facility, the RF interference present and the bandwidth strain if numerous devices are placed on the same network.

There are a number of factors to consider when choosing industrial device networking solutions.

The industrial device networking solution should connect enterprise systems to factory floor devices without disturbing control networks or requiring dedicated wiring for remote monitoring, diagnosing and controlling equipment from anywhere and at any time.

A preferred industrial networking solution enables connecting to virtually any piece of factory equipment to a network or to the Internet to interactively access, manage, control, repair and even automate data capture.

Industrial device networking solutions should be designed to operate within a wide temperature range such as from -40 to +70C.

The solutions should be certified with FM approval for hazardous locations Class 1, Div 2.

These solutions should also resist exposure to electrical shock, vibration and physical abuse.

To ensure device interoperability, industrial device networking solutions must support protocols such as Modbus TCP, ASCII, RTU and DF1.

For the information collected by the industrial device networking solution, it must be able to be used directly with two systems typically found in most industrial operations: human machine interface (HMI) and supervisory control and data acquisition (Scada).

Rockwell Automation is one of the leading global providers of industrial automation power, control, and information solutions that help customers meet their manufacturing objectives.

One of the company's leading brands is Allen-Bradley, a manufacturer of automation controls and a provider of engineering services.

Allen-Bradley control solutions have set a high standard in industrial automation, helping the industry apply programmable logic controller (PLC) technology for the past 30 years.

Rockwell's customers needed to remotely access and manage their PLCs where only a serial interface was available.

To meet their needs, Rockwell designed an industrial device networking server to provide Ethernet/IP connectivity.

Their device server provided a gateway from the controller's serial port to an Ethernet network.

This allowed customers to upload/download programs, communicate between controllers and generate e-mail messages via SMTP (simple mail transport protocol).

The result: Rockwell Automation enhanced the capabilities of its PLCs and allowed its customers to remotely access their controllers from anywhere in the world.

In the case of Texas Instruments, the world leader in digital signal processing and analogue technologies that drive semiconductor engines, the company needed secure remote access to all its process control equipment at the company's support centre, while keeping costs and wiring at a minimum.

The company needed to measure and read the concentration of contaminants in water samples.

Before deploying industrial device networking, the process used by the company was complicated, involving the transfer of a signal from a water analyser to a PLC to an HMI where reading of the measurement was often flawed.

As the company's facility control centre operated process control equipment on a legacy network, independent of its LAN, it needed to network-enable all the process control equipment at the support centre which would have required 500m of wiring and conduit spanning multiple buildings for added expense and time.

By implementing an industrial device networking solution on multiple key pieces of equipment such as airflow, water and gas detectors at its fabrication facility, its support centre can now remotely monitor and control critical elements of the fabrication factory (airflow, water treatment and gas detection) in an adjacent facility.

By integrating the industrial device networking solution, all its equipment in the support centre is Ethernet-enabled, allowing more than 500 PCs in the centre to have access in real time to information as it is generated by the process control equipment.

As a result, it was no longer necessary for a technician to patrol the floor of the fabrication to monitor each device individually and response time was significantly improved whenever a failure was detected.

These are just two examples of how industrial device networking can revolutionise the world of industrial manufacturing.

By quickly and reliably connecting virtually any piece of factory equipment to a network or the Internet, industrial manufacturers gain the ability to interactively access, manage, control, evaluate and use data transmitted from the devices.

This powerful, yet simple to implement technology allows manufacturers to perform real-time diagnostics and repair, automate data capture and gain immediate notification of problems, virtually from anywhere over an Internet connection.

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