Networked Enterprise Featured Article

In some ways, technology can be equated with living beings. Through the years, technology has a way of evolving to a better form and maturing, constantly moving forwarding through new versions. In fact, one technology can sometimes evolve to a point where it gives birth to a variation that takes on a life of its own.

In many cases, it only takes one thing to happen in order to bring two or more technology together, thus changing the landscape as we know it. The Internet of Things (IoT) and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications seem to be quite the impetus for change.

It seems that along with other advancing technologies, the two mentioned above have come a long way toward converging manufacturing operations technology (OT) and enterprise information technology (IT) systems into a network architecture that is unified.  The result of being able to access a great deal of production data is that changes and improvements can be made rapidly to a quickly changing market.

As the Internet of Things continues to connect not only devices, but items of all types together, we will mostly likely see the proprietary and closed systems that many manufacturing plants currently have become a thing of the past. This will allow the plant to be information driven, which means that as the market changes, it will be easier to change manufacturing processes.

Every day, more companies are allowing their employees to bring their own devices (BYOD) to work. While we mostly see this on the enterprise side, being able to use your tablet or smartphone in the plant will allow for greater mobility. Mobile technology can be applied to equipment giving it the ability to reconfigure manufacturing processes to accommodate flexible operations and for wireless tooling.

Wireless networking can also provide remote access to many plant locations. It is no longer necessary to have an in-house technician to resolve issues. Being able to monitor all aspects of a plant’s operations allows the technician the ability to keep a step ahead and either resolve issues as soon as they occur, or better yet, keep them from happening in the first place.

Toward this end, video can also play a major role. In fact, a video conferencing platform based on interoperable cloud services can provide a multitude of options. IP-based video can provide additional security measures, monitor the efficiency of the entire plant and allow technicians to actually see a situation before deciding on a course of action.

We hear the word “smart” a lot these days. Generally, it refers to devices that can be controlled remotely, such as the lights, thermostat and other items in a home or automobile. The same smart technology can be applied to a manufacturing plant. This will allow the plant’s energy management to be maximized and not simply considered to be just another cost of doing business.

Facilities of all type will benefit as technology continues to mature and more technologies merge and offer simpler and more secure methods of accomplishing tasks.

One such example is government and military facilities, which require premium physical security, video surveillance and network security, all while minimizing operational costs. At all levels, government is being challenged to manage budgets more strictly, while still providing higher quality and more timely service.

The demand for current tools requires network improvements to support the secure delivery of programs and increase operational efficiency. Panduit is a company that offers solutions which help government organizations assess, deploy and converge a secure and energy efficient facility-wide physical infrastructure. The company have partnered with government facilities nationwide, providing solutions that offer the availability, agility, integration and security all businesses, especially municipal facilities, require.