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Plantwide Ethernet architecture boosts performance & uptime PANDUIT'S COSTA RICA MANUFACTURING facility was experiencing various challenges relating to its industrial network. The company's manufacturing equipment was running on legacy PLCs, which caused reliability and uptime issues. In addition, the plant's network architecture had outgrown its originally planned scale and was creating challenges with upgrades and maintenance. Finally, network security was a major concern due to dated network security equipment and unmonitored access to the network on the plant floor. To resolve these challenges, Panduit decided to implement a network refresh and transition plan for the Costa Rica facility. The best way to achieve this was to use the best practices and guidelines set forth by Converged Plantwide Ethernet (CPwE) employing equipment from Panduit, Cisco, and Rockwell Automation. To meet the demands of its network refresh and transition plan, the solution for the Costa Rica facility was to deploy a new The Rockwell Automation Network Resilient Ethernet Protocol (REP) switch ring network. and Security Services Group (NSS) was contracted to create the bill of materials for the network equipment and a transition to the manufacturing execution system (MES) Strategic Objectives plan required to best deploy CPwE. The Panduit The most important goal for this project was to gather data for the main production key team would implement the transition plan and to deploy a secure and reliable industrial performance indicators (KPIs). A dedicated, integrate the new network equipment. network to connect each machine/operation hardened, and secure network would The transition plan would help the Panduit demonstrate the value of the industrial Costa Rica manufacturing facility achieve network and it would allow Panduit to improve a more redundant and robust network network uptime and production equipment infrastructure starting with the installation availability. of brand new Allen-Bradley PLCs and network Another essential goal was to provide a equipment. path for future network growth which would As part of the network upgrade, the enable equipment expansions and enhanced manufacturing equipment would be migrated data gathering to improve processes. This off the old network and transferred to the new would enhance the company’s ability to scale network. and upgrade the network, as needed, in the This approach would separate the industrial future. The improved data-gathering process network from the enterprise network to help allows for better and more consistent analysis protect the industrial network from downtime, of valuable manufacturing statistics. while improving reliability in the process. “The CPwE deployment at our Costa Rica It would also offer more scalability and manufacturing facility has enabled a drastic maintainability. improvement in our network reliability, Finally, hardened enclosures for the scalability, and maintainability. This switches would provide improved physical deployment is the template for all future security, while improved network architecture network upgrades in our manufacturing and equipment would provide upgraded facilities,” said Mike Kimbrell, Manager IT, Stratix 5400 Industrial Ethernet Switch. logical security. Panduit. 11. 2019
i n d u str i a l e th e r n e t b o o k
SOURCE: PANDUIT
Panduit implemented a plant-wide network technology upgrade in its Costa Rica facility to achieve optimized uptime and productivity. A single scalable architecture, using EtherNet/IP standard networking, provided the flexibility, visibility, and efficiency needed to create a competitive manufacturing environment.
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