IT and OT Training for Industrial Ethernet

IT and OT Training for Industrial Ethernet

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Industrial IP Advantage has launched an eLearning course focused on IT/OT integration for Industrial Ethernet. This is the fourth in a series of training courses designed to meet the emerging needs of control engineers and IT professionals tasked with deploying a secure network architecture. These courses are jointly developed by Cisco, Panduit and Rockwell Automation and available on the Industrial IP Advantage website.

Controls engineers have the plant-level domain knowledge needed to identify and analyze new industrial technologies that will help improve production efficiency and flexibility. Meanwhile, IT engineers have the domain knowledge needed to present actionable information where it is needed within an enterprise and throughout the value chain. This new course provides both with a sufficient level of knowledge to collaboratively architect a smart, integrated control system.

“Convergence between the IT and OT worlds is demanding new skills and knowledge,” said Ricardo Borlone, product manager at Precision Inc. “These self-paced courses are filling the skills gaps, and allow each participant to advance in their own time, rhythm and learning capacity. I especially enjoy this training format as it provides me the opportunity to focus on areas that match my interest and needs.”

The online training brings together the combined knowledge, best practices and application-specific expertise of three industry leaders to help engineers build a holistic IP-based network architecture. The courses are designed to help engineers drive design decisions from the device-level to the enterprise-wide network, leveraging interactive, scenario-based training on topics, such as logical topologies, protocols, switching and routing, security, physical cabling and wireless considerations.

The four available courses include:

  • Courses 1 and 2: Designing for the Cell/Area Zone
  • Course 3: Designing for Industrial Zone
  • Course 4: IT/OT Integration

The full training program is offered for $350 on the Industrial IP Advantage website.

“A critical mass of industrialized networking technology is now available. And for many manufacturers, the real challenge is finding qualified staff to design, deploy and maintain these networks,” said Paul Brooks, networks business development manager, Rockwell Automation. “The eLearning courses offered by Industrial IP Advantage are designed to help fill this skills gap.”

“Building a skilled and competent workforce ready to deploy a converged architecture presents businesses with more than just greater connectivity. It offers tremendous productivity gains, process efficiencies, and business value,” said Paul Taylor, senior manager, Cisco.

“A structured, engineered approach to assessing, designing, deploying and monitoring the physical infrastructure is necessary to ensure that investments in critical manufacturing networks deliver optimum performance,” said Ryan Lepp, director of business development, Panduit.  “These new training courses help both IT and OT professionals work together to deliver optimal network performance with adherence to industry standards.”

Industrial IP Advantage is a community established by Cisco, Panduit and Rockwell Automation – three like-minded organizations joining together to educate the market on the benefits of Ethernet, Internet Protocol and EtherNet/IP. Industrial IP Advantage was formed in cooperation with ODVA, the organization that manages and commercializes the EtherNet/IP specification and standard.

The vision of Industrial IP Advantage is enabling smart manufacturing with a workforce that is fully prepared to accelerate the transformation to secure information architectures with best practices, education and training that drive IT/OT convergence.

IT and OT Training for Industrial Ethernet

Edge Devices On The Industrial Internet

What is an “edge” device in terms of network architecture for today’s Industrial Internet of Things? Classical networking practice has had it’s definition. But how do you extend the definition in today’s industrial networks with perhaps thousands of devices at the edge? Do you label all those smart devices as edge?

I have been spending much time with Dell Technologies and its IoT division. It has built a computing device with a multitude of connection ports, data storage, and computing capability. This device is named Gateway, but it is labeled as an edge device. Meanwhile I interviewed two GE Automation and Controls executives who labeled controllers (PLCs) as edge devices.

I ran across this article by ARC Advisory Group’s Greg Gorbach. I’ve quoted some of it below. You can read it in its entirety here. He analyzes a number of points of view. Does it all matter to you what is called an edge device? How do you configure a modern IIoT network?

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Power of Edge – Greg Gorbach

What is the industrial edge, and why does it matter?  Is it network infrastructure? Can the edge be found in a sensor that feeds a controller in a plant?  Or is it in a smart machine that’s in service halfway around the globe?

In networking, an edge device is a device which provides an entry point into enterprise or service provider core networks.  Examples include routers, routing switches, integrated access devices, multiplexers, and a variety of local area network (LAN) and wide area network (WAN) access devices. Edge devices also provide connections into carrier and service provider networks.  Network providers and others have been pushing intelligence – compute power and the ability to run applications and analytics – to these edge devices for some time.

But the growth of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) extends the ‘edge’ beyond the network devices, into industrial and commercial devices, machines, and sensors which connect to the network.  Edge computing and analytics can, often should be, and increasingly is close to the machines and data sources.  As the digitization of industrial systems proceeds, we expect that analysis, decision-making, and control will be physically distributed among edge devices, the network, the cloud, and connected systems, as appropriate.

These functions will end up where it makes most sense for them to be.

IIoT will change the way industrial organizations generate, collect, and analyze data. Data will be generated faster and in greater volume than ever before. This will require today’s plant information infrastructure to evolve. One part of this new infrastructure will be intelligent edge devices, which will include the latest generation of controllers, such as DCS’s, PLC’s and PACs. Besides providing control, these edge devices will securely collect, aggregate, filter, and relay data, leveraging their close proximity to industrial processes or production assets. They will also be capable of collaborating with powerful analytics tools, detecting anomalies in real time, and raising alarms so that operators can take appropriate actions.

With edge computing and analytics, data is processed near the source, in sensors, controllers, machines, gateways, and the like.  These systems may not send all data back to the cloud, but the data can be used to inform local machine behaviors as it is filtered and integrated.  The edge systems may decide what gets sent, where it gets sent and when it gets sent.

Placing intelligence at the edge helps address problems often encountered in industrial settings, such as oil rigs, mines, chemical plants, and factories.  These include low bandwidth, low latency, and the perceived need to keep mission critical data on site to protect IP.

As you think about digitizing and transforming your industrial operations or your products and services, pay special attention to the edge.  Consider the optimal location for analysis, decision-making, and control, and the best way to distribute these among edge devices, the network, the cloud, and other connected systems.

IT and OT Training for Industrial Ethernet

Time Sensitive Networking to Promote Interoperable Ecosystem

News regarding Time Sensitive Networking continues to flow. The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL), an independent provider of broad-based testing and standards conformance services for the networking industry, announced the launch of three industry-specific time sensitive networking (TSN) consortiums – Automotive Networking, Industrial Networking, and ProAV Networking – designed to provide deterministic performance within standard Ethernet for real-time, mission critical applications. By providing high quality test plans, tools, and test beds for TSN, UNH-IOL allows businesses to improve products and accelerate market readiness.

“Standards-based precise time, guaranteed bandwidth, and guaranteed worst-case latency in a converged Ethernet network is a game-changer to many industries,” said Bob Noseworthy, Chief Engineer, UNH-IOL. “Through UNH-IOL’s industry-specific TSN consortiums, companies can be at the forefront and drive the technology forward by validating their solutions with a full suite of testing services, which will allow applications such as self-driving cars and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to take off.”

Originally established as a “best effort” network, Ethernet needs additional specific features to deploy mission critical applications. TSN standards enable deterministic real-time communication over Ethernet, allowing solutions to be built to provide extremely precise, predictable timing across the network. By adding features to Ethernet such as time synchronization, ingress policing, seamless redundancy, frame preemption, scheduled traffic, and stream reservation, TSN ensures mission-critical, time sensitive data is not held up on the network, promoting an interoperable ecosystem spanning across many industries. As TSN standards mature, UNH-IOL consortium members are able to support rapid development of conformance and interoperability solutions for emerging standards, validating their silicon and early products by gaining access to test solutions as well as multi-vendor test beds.

A major driving force behind the development of TSN standards is the emerging Automotive Ethernet market. The future connected, autonomous vehicle requires the time sensitivity and predictability in networking that TSN provides to support Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) requirements, infotainment expectations from consumers, and other elements of vehicle electronics. Supporting automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and manufacturers supplying OEMs enabled with deterministic Ethernet solutions, the TSN Automotive Networking Consortium provides a setting for collaboration and participation in shaping the emerging standards through neutral, third party conformance and interoperability testing.

TSN’s importance is also emerging in industrial automation due to the rise in interest around the IIoT, specifically the mission-critical, time sensitive data that must be transferred and shared within strict bounds of latency and reliability. TSN enhancements for Industrial Ethernet provide standards-based determinism and reliability needed for these applications. The TSN Industrial Networking Consortium brings together stakeholders to realize the benefits of TSN – bandwidth, security, interoperability, and latency and synchronization for IIoT, robotics, assembly plants, and machines, as well as shape the standards and protocols for TSN in the industrial market.

Recent enhancements and certifications in the audio/video market have created a wider choice of compatible products and open technology that brings high-quality AV networking within the reach of any size Professional AV system.  TSN enhancements provide the important timing audio and video systems need. The Pro AV Networking TSN Consortium is a testing ground for the promises of seamless redundancy, low-latency, and synchronization in the professional audio/video market.

UNH-IOL provides the test facility for stakeholders across multiple industries – automotive, industrial, and Pro AV – to drive the emerging, maturing TSN standards. To learn more about joining the new consortiums, please visit: Automotive Networking TSN Consortium, Industrial Networking TSN Consortium, Pro AV Networking TSN Consortium.

IT and OT Training for Industrial Ethernet

Belden Joins Industry-Leading Effort For Time-Sensitive Networking

Time-Sensitive Networking holds the promise for great advances in industrial networking when it gets adopted for deterministic high-speed Ethernet. The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) has taken a leading role in advancing the standard. Belden Inc. has joined the IIC Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) Testbed, which aims to improve multi-vendor interoperability and to display the value of the IEEE 802.1 Ethernet standards for time-sensitive networking in a manufacturing ecosystem.

“By enabling a single Ethernet network to deliver time-guaranteed messages for both mission-critical and time-sensitive applications, while simultaneously delivering high-bandwidth, supervisory, data collection, video and other traffic, TSN fulfils a critical need in bringing the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to manufacturing environments,” said Jeff Lund, senior director of product line management at Belden and co-chair of the IIC marketing working group. “Belden has been a leading participant in the IEEE standardization effort of TSN since 2009 and we’re excited to be at the point where that hard work is now demonstrated in a multi-vendor environment. We hope our many years of experience with TSN will add valuable insight to the testbed and ensure it delivers on its mission.”

The TSN Testbed was on display at the 2016 IoT Solutions World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Oct. 25-27. Event attendees viewed live demonstrations of the testbed, which includes Hirschmann’s prototype TSN-enabled RSP Ethernet switches, and see first-hand the possibilities TSN enables for industrial networks.

“The addition of Belden to our TSN Testbed will help bring our collective efforts one step closer to reality – as we all work together in the pursuit of converging IT and operational technologies,” said Dr. Richard Soley, executive director of the IIC. “Testbeds serve as a center of innovation, and we know Belden’s TSN experience will help us achieve our goal. This testbed in particular seeks to show the value of TSN technology, as well as identify and address any implementation challenges to continue improving the standards.”

Following the event, the testbed will be moved to National Instruments’ headquarters in Austin, Texas. In addition to National Instruments, Belden is working alongside leading industrial companies, including Schneider Electric and Bosch Rexroth, among others.

Automation Fair Number 25 Unveils Rockwell Automation’s New Leader

Automation Fair Number 25 Unveils Rockwell Automation’s New Leader

blake-moret-2016There is a discernible change in atmosphere around Rockwell Automation these days. The statement is not meant in anyway to reflect on former President and CEO (and still chairman) Keith Nosbusch. Newly elected President and CEO Blake Moret appears to be settling in to the new role, and he brings a distinctly new personality to leadership.

I was greatly honored that due to some schedule changes that created disruption with the usual media interviews on Tuesday he still worked out some time late Monday afternoon for a private interview.

When I left my last position, I searched for a focus and name for a new, Web-based media site. The Manufacturing Connection made the most sense—and I could get the domain name. Then I went to the first Rockwell Automation event following and found a new theme—Connected Enterprise. We’re all thinking about the importance of connections.

Moret started with the Connected Enterprise theme. His vision for the company’s direction includes and expands upon the theme. It’s not only EtherNet/IP (they still talk about “standard, unmodified Ethernet”). Networking is important. Beyond the network are connecting people, projects, services.

Not only did Moret present the importance of the Information Solutions business, the topic came up later in a general session. Rockwell has definitely grown the capabilities of its software solutions. Its analytics capabilities appear to be robust (Rockwell is using it internally in its own manufacturing processes) with the goal of continually improving its ease of use.

The foundation of Rockwell Automation’s Connected strategy lies with plant floor devices. “Since the majority of devices come from us,” Moret said, “we can connect easily to obtain the information necessary for the MES and enterprise levels.”

Several integrators pinged me before my trip to ask me to investigate the repercussions of the acquisition of system integrator Maverick Technologies. “We’ve always had a dual approach,” Moret told me. (That reminded me of my sales engineer days in the 90s when I had Rockwell quote a couple of projects as the integrator.) “We have no intention of walking away from our partners. But there are customers who want a single source of responsibility. We can handle those projects now.”

“And, by the way,” he added, “we doubled the number of Chemical Engineers in the company with this acquisition. We added a lot of domain expertise.”

The transition seems to be smooth so far. Leadership changes are a critical event in an organization. Handled well, the organization gains renewed vitality and direction. Rockwell Automation is on the right path.

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