Description:
An industrial network is a system formed when your plant facility, controllers, and computers are interlinked to work together. To achieve this, you need to have the right industrial networking devices. These are a wide range of equipment and devices that allow computers to program and monitor different Programmable Logic Controllers (
PLC) in real-time. The devices used for industrial networking can be broken into four basic levels; information, devices, control, and safety. Every level comes with own requirements in terms of devices and operations. At the information level, this is where most traditional components such as the standard Ethernet are applied. In industrial settings, networking allows sharing of files and data between computers. At the control level, this is where machines, work areas, and work cells are networked. It is at this level where Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition is implemented. At the device level, you need to have the right smart devices such as
limit switches, and photo eyes. The last level of industrial networking is safety. The main focus of safety is to have a control structure that can make decisions about the needs of different types of equipment. The devices installed at this level use advanced level of machine learning to automate operations. For example, if the system notes that the temperature of a specific unit has been exceeded, it initiates a shutdown to prevent further harm.