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the manufacturing enterprise system
(MES) focuses on the scheduling of
production. It uses the ERP outputs,
communicates with the production
plant equipment and tells the
equipment what to do.
NETWORKING,
PROCESSING AND
SENSING IN THE SMART
FACTORY
With many companies offering
different types of factory equipment
and many generations of that
equipment coexisting, connecting
equipment from different vendors and
different time periods that conforms
to different standards can be quite
challenging. It’s further complicated
by the fact that this factory equipment
must also communicate with a
company’s IT network (enterprise
and/or Internet); combinations of
PCbased systems; gateways, black
boxes and industrial switches built
around multiple protocols. As such,
a factory can quickly turn into a
heterogeneous nightmare, lacking
the simplicity and flexibility that a
“plug-and-work” operation demands.
Intelligent gateways like the CPPS-
Gate40 from SoC-e (Figure 2) will
play a vital role in offering secure and
transparent operation between both
worlds (machine and IT). Microdeco
is a company that manufactures small
metal parts for the automotive sector.
The company is always looking for
ways to enhance productivity and is
at the forefront of using intelligent
systems. In the company’s pilot plant,
located in Ermua, Spain, Microdeco
has built a networking infrastruc
ture around the concept of smart
gateways that combine in the same
system networking, processing and
sensing. One of the top challenges
in creating a smart factory lies in
connecting the various systems. The
factory includes high-speed optical
links that interconnect the various
cyber physical production system
(CPPS) areas-that is, each production
group of machines, sensors and
actuators. The intelligent gateway is
in charge of all the communication
infrastructure. This includes, the
highspeed switching for the fiber
links and flexible, trispeed Ethernet
ports to implement regular Ethernet
or Industrial Ethernet protocols in
each cell, along with serial ports to
implement widely
used industrial protocols such as
Modbus and Profibus. Figure 3 shows
how each smart gateway installed in
each machine (CPPS area) is tied to
the next one using a single fiber-optic
link. The infrastructure is completed
by connecting all the devices in a
single ring that implements the High-
Availability Seamless Redundancy
(HSR) protocol. This nonproprietary
(IEC 62439-3 Clause 5) Ethernet
“zero-delay recovery time” solution
allows operators to disconnect any
equipment from the ring without
adversely affecting other nodes or
Figure 1 – Scheduling the
production via ERP/MES
46 l New-Tech Magazine Europe