Ethernet and IP storm factory nets

By Carolyn Duffy Marsan
Network World, 2000-07-10

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. - On the outskirts of this colonial town, you can catch a glimpse of how standard network technology and the Internet are revolutionizing the factory floor.

General Electric's Fanuc Automation plant, which produces more than one million printed circuit boards per year, is running TCP/IP over an Ethernet LAN on the control systems that operate its five manufacturing lines.

This new network backbone allows Fanuc engineers to remotely monitor and control factory equipment over the Web to find out why it is running slow and to prevent it from breaking down.

The network also allows manufacturing line managers to provide such statistics as boards produced, orders shipped and defects found directly into the plant's enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems for executives to evaluate. Eventually, the plant will make this factory floor data available to its suppliers over the Web to improve the inventory process.

"Right now, when a job comes into the plant, the probability that we have all the parts on site is only 5%," says Christopher Conti, an operations manager at the Fanuc plant. By sharing information with suppliers, Conti predicts he can improve that figure to 70% - an efficiency gain that translates into faster customer deliveries.

Million-dollar upgrade

The Fanuc plant has spent more than $1 million upgrading its manufacturing line network to integrate Ethernet and TCP/IP with its control systems. Over the next 12 months, the plant will drive these Internet standards down to the control system devices to provide an unprecedented level of data integration between the factory floor and the rest of the organization.

"The payback will come immediately in labor productivity," says Lorrie Norrington, CEO of GE Fanuc Automation. "We'll also get cash back on inventory and improve our customer satisfaction."

Norrington's goal is to make the Fanuc plant a showcase for adopting Internet standards on the factory floor. "I think we'll see at least a 10% productivity gain in the next year because of this network upgrade," she adds.

GE Fanuc isn't alone. Companies rolling out Ethernet and TCP/IP to connect their factory floors to their front offices include Boeing, General Motors, Colgate-Palmolive and Cenex Harvest States, the nation's largest cooperative oil refinery.

The trend picked up momentum last month when GE teamed with Cisco to form a joint venture that will design, install and support manufacturing networks built on the latest Internet technologies. Officials at GE Cisco Industrial Networks, also based in Charlottesville, Va., expect to bring in $100 million in revenue by 2003.

"Ethernet on the factory floor is a very strong trend, but it's just beginning," says Dick Caro, vice president of ARC Advisory Group, a Dedham, Mass., manufacturing consultancy. "There are just a handful of people using these methods, mostly for pilot projects."

Long the standard LAN technology in corporate offices, Ethernet is now being used to connect and control the pumps, gauges, valves, engines, lasers, sensors, switches and drives on manufacturing lines. The reasons behind this trend are that Ethernet devices are faster and less expensive to maintain than special-purpose industrial network devices.

Another advantage of using Internet technologies in manufacturing is the ability to conduct remote diagnostics and preventative maintenance on equipment over the Web - a big cost savings when compared with sending a technician out into the field for repairs.

"Where you have intelligent devices in the field, the diagnostics for these devices can be brought back to the end user on a Web page," Caro says. "You can do diagnostics or repairs of a machine from the control room instead of wheeling up a PC and an oscilloscope."

The adoption of Ethernet and TCP/IP on the plant floor is part of a broader push toward enterprisewide information integration. Many leading manufacturers have connected their office systems to their suppliers and customers over the Web. Now they want to integrate factory floor data to improve decision-making.

"Manufacturers need to either drive growth or they need to drive productivity," Norrington explains. "To do that, it's critical for them to get all the important information off the factory floor."

Today, manufacturing line managers tend to pull data out of their factory automation systems weekly or monthly and manually plug it in to ERP systems. When the factory floor and back office systems are running on the same network infrastructure, this information can be easily shared in real time with suppliers and customers.

"IT and business management people now want [plant floor data] faster so they can make decisions more rapidly to customize orders or change manufacturing parameters," explains Jeff Jervah, U.S. automation product marketing manager for Schneider Electric, which sells factory control devices with integrated Web browsers.

Not everyone thinks manufacturers are going to see immediate benefits from these information integration projects. "The people who make the software for enterprises have these grandiose ideas about accessing shop floor information. . . . Nonsense. They have always been able to access that information through [control devices]," Caro says. "The real reasons you can justify the investment in Ethernet are because of cost savings, speed and improved diagnostics. Those are the real benefits in the short term."

One company already reaping these benefits is Cenex, which uses an Ethernet and TCP/IP network to monitor oil pumping through a pipeline that stretches 300 miles from the Canadian border to a refinery in Laurel, Mont.

The network operates over a fiber-optic cable that runs parallel to the pipeline, with Ethernet modules at both ends and at a control center in the middle. The Ethernet network links the devices that control the pipeline's machinery, including valves, pumps, pressure gauges and temperature readers. Using software from GE, Cenex engineers can monitor and operate pipeline machinery remotely over the network. The network also carries real-time video of what's happening inside the pipeline.

"I can monitor the uptime on all the devices. I can do some diagnostics on each device and collect errors," says Bob Gauthier, a Cenex automation engineer. "If we had a leak, we could stop it in nanoseconds by shutting off the valves from 300 miles away."

Pumped-up pipeline

The company recently spent $50,000 to upgrade the pipeline network to support a 70% increase in the amount of oil pumped through. Now the pipeline handles 2,600 barrels an hour, sending oil to two refineries instead of one. To handle the extra data on the pipeline network, Cenex added four Cisco switches to segregate traffic and prevent collisions.

"Since we upgraded the network, we haven't had a failure," says Bob Gauthier, a Cenex automation engineer. "In three months, we haven't seen any data collisions. We've had no downtime."

Gauthier says Cenex may replace the control network with another pipeline that runs from Laurel, Mont., to Fargo, N.D., with a similar Ethernet backbone. And the Cenex IT department is trying to figure out how to integrate its pipeline control systems with its business systems.

"We need to integrate the data on the pipeline with the inventory systems, especially for the purchase of crude oil in Canada," Gauthier says. "Now that's manually done. . . . But ultimately, we're looking for real-time integration."

This data integration trend has implications for corporate IT departments, which traditionally have not been involved in the selection of products used in factory automation. Now, however, network managers are being tapped to help design, install and maintain Ethernet and TCP/IP networks in manufacturing environments.

"Any substantial company with a couple thousand people will already have an Ethernet network installed at many levels with all kinds of switches and hubs," Caro says. "The IT department already has the diagnostic tools, the people and the experience with Ethernet. It's natural for those people to work with Ethernet on the manufacturing floor."

Corporate chief information officers are starting to evaluate factory automation plans, agrees Kevin Prouty, research director for discrete manufacturing at AMR Research in Boston.

"We're already seeing corporate IT departments setting guidelines that any piece of electronic equipment that comes in to the company has to support Ethernet and TCP/IP and that they have to be involved in guiding the purchase," Prouty says.