The fourth industrial revolution is changing the way we create products thanks to the digitization of our manufacturing and process facilities. We have seen the benefits of automation over many decades and are now fueling these systems with enhanced data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. In this article, learn how innovative industrial ethernet solutions are helping companies enable Industry 4.0.
Why Industrial Ethernet?
With connectivity being central to the Industry 4.0 vision, three things must become a reality to deliver a truly connected enterprise:
- • Higher-level information technology (IT) or enterprise infrastructure must converge with the plant floor control network.
- • Various networks or manufacturing cells currently in existence on factory floors must all coexist and interoperate.
- • Seamless, secure connectivity across process environments, from the edge of the process to the enterprise cloud.
Ethernet, being a well-understood technology with extensive deployments, emerges as the ideal solution.
Extending to the Process Edge
An impactful change of Industrial Ethernet is the ability to enable seamless connectivity from the edge node to the enterprise cloud in process control applications. Ethernet offers much faster connectivity than current solutions and is easily expanded when your business grows.
What's Available Today?
New robust, low latency, low power physical layer technology combined with scalable switch fabrics are required to support the evolution of our automation networks. The ADI Chronous™ portfolio of scalable Ethernet solutions includes physical layer devices (PHYs), embedded switches, and complete platform solutions with multiprotocol software.
What About Security?
Building security into today’s increasingly complex networks is far from easy; it requires a multilayer approach to make it inherent throughout the system—within edge devices, controllers, gateways, and further up the stack. ADI’s Chronous portfolio offers security at each node point within the system, while minimizing trade-offs in power, performance, and latency.
The Roadmap to Deployment
At the heart of the Industry 4.0 vision is the ability to automate processes using connected devices with the capacity to collect, send, and receive information. ADI Chronous is unlocking the data and insights previously unobtainable from many edge node devices, thereby awakening new realms of possibilities for data analysis and operation insight. Industrial Ethernet connectivity will awaken this reality through the seamless transfer of current and future data streams across the automation network to the cloud.