The physical network is the foundation of digital manufacturing, it’s how data gets from one place to another, from sensors on the factory floor to the operators making real-time decisions that impact production. The physical network is also the last place most people look to improve performance. Many plants and factories are using the same network infrastructure they were 20 years ago, and most IT departments don’t have the same visibility and control over the OT network as they do with the IT network.
Machines Are Only as Smart as Their Connections
A robotic arm performs a precise welding operation and continuously sends and receives data. Whether it’s sensor readings, torque measurements, or thermal feedback, this data must be transmitted from the machine to a controller, and often to an ERP system in another part of the factory, in virtually real-time. If there is significant latency in this communication chain, errors may occur, triggers might be missed, and potentially hazardous discrepancies could develop between the machine’s current state and the records in the system.
The foundation of the Industrial Internet of Things is the physical infrastructure. A “smart factory” does not exist if the cabling isn’t carefully planned in advance. Cat6a and fiber optic media should not be considered optional special features, as they are the fundamental requirements for supporting the high-bandwidth demands of industrial operation.
What Electromagnetic Interference is Actually Costing You
Factories need to be in motion to generate revenue. Plant managers tolerate downtime only when there’s no other option. Yet the production line is a rough place for data connections. Twisted-pair Ethernet in particular depends on supremacy over interference thanks to its low voltages. That’s an unbeatable proposition in the relative calm of your office, but less compelling at the robotic welder.
Industrial Ethernet shuts the noise out as best it can with shielding and careful grounding of cables, although it’s nowhere near as resistant as the copper busbar powering that same welding robot. That doesn’t matter, of course, because the signals have to get through. Cable installation comes with precise requirements not just for how to prevent interference, but even how to route a line above electrical cables.
Building a Network Architecture That Doesn’t Need to be Rebuilt
One of the costliest mistakes a plant can make is sending wiring from every machine to a control panel with no real topology in mind. It works until you run out of cabinet space, and then the real cost isn’t in the repair, it’s in running all-new cables for a network that was never designed to be expandable.
A star topology, with appropriately located consolidation points and distribution frames, provides a plant the wiggle room it needs to expand over time. When a new sensor array is added to an existing production line, or a robotic cell is incorporated into the workflow, a well-designed network can make that new installation a seamless part of the existing infrastructure.
This is the point at which structured cabling stops being an expense and becomes an investment. It no longer is just about making sure the lights are on today: it also is about never having to add all-new conduits to the raceway every time a new machine is installed.
The Expanding Role of the Industrial Electrician
Electricians doing power runs in an industrial context is one thing. Power has a very visible, and powerful, impact. Do the wires heat up? Is the motor turning? Yep, we have power.
When we terminate an Ethernet line, the termination is the easy part, probably isn’t even a part. What matters is everything that termination represents: How many conductor twists did you lose in the punch down? Is that showing up in your insertion loss? How does your pair-to-pair next compare to your target? How do all of these things interact with your return loss, and what’s your delay skew between pairs?
That’s a whole bunch of questions that someone who maxed out at a two-week course on basic network cabling probably isn’t well-placed to answer.
From Siloed Machines to Integrated Operations
In the old days, machines in the factory did their jobs independently. Data was stored on local PLCs, if they stored any data at all. When you transition to these integrated operations, where the shop floor is directly inputting into the production planning software and you have those real-time dashboards, the network has to be there to be able to carry that load.
It’s not going to work if you have signal latency. It’s not going to work if there is no signal integrity. And it’s not going to work if the physical infrastructure can’t carry the volume of data that these IIoT devices are generating on the floor. The tolerance levels and the requirements for a network to be able to be reliable with IIoT allow you to bring zero or even negative latency to some of these systems, and help maintain signal integrity and prevent any kinds of shutdowns.
Scalability is not a software problem. It’s a cabling problem first.
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