New-Tech Europe Magazine | May 2016

Figure 1 – Scheduling the production via ERP/MES

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

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,

(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

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