MANUFACTURING
Streamline Production Processes, Cut Costs
For many manufacturers, Internet of Everything technology is already boosting innovation and efficiency. Businesses are benefitting from an interconnected factory environment where sensors, robots, machines, and more can all be networked.
Cisco offers proven solutions, advanced services, and industry-leading partnerships that make it easier for you take full advantage of Internet of Everything innovations. We are working hard to help you eliminate product recalls, get to market faster with less downtime, and adapt to changing markets in real time and improve decision making with new solutions that:
- Improve operational efficiency and productivity Cisco Connected Factory
- Protect against risks, improve efficiency, and reduce site downtime Cisco Secure Ops
- Increase supply chain flexibility and agility Cisco Connected Supply Chain
- Use leading-edge communications and Collaboration Tools
Cisco Connected Factory
The Cisco Connected Factory Solution is a portfolio of validated, proven architectures, capabilities, and market-leading technologies and services. By leveraging the Internet of Everything, this solution is designed to help industrial companies:
- Rapidly and more securely integrate industrial automation and control with business systems
- Build one common, converged, rugged, plant-to business network
- Improve operational costs and efficiency
- Find and fix problems faster to improve production uptime and equipment availability
- Improve security through control of network access by user and location with identity services
Cisco provides the breadth of plant infrastructure capabilities across networking, wireless, security, physical video, computing, and communications. In this way, the solution can flexibly support the current and future business needs of manufacturers. It meets the requirements of both business IT and operational technology in a highly secure, reliable, and integrated platform.
Connected Factory is built on years of partnership with industry leader Rockwell Automation, through the joint development work on the Converged Plantwide Ethernet Validated Architecture and Design Guide. The initial solutions in this portfolio include Factory Automation and Factory Wireless
Factory Automation
With Factory Automation, industrial companies can build one common, converged, and rugged plant-to-business network. This way, you can:
- Connect factory automation and control systems to IT systems with standards-based IP-networking
- Improve operational efficiency and cut costs with highly secure remote access
- Speed response time to issues on the plant floor
- Mitigate risks by improving network uptime and equipment availability
- Protect critical manufacturing assets with industry-leading security features
These benefits will help you make more strategic business decisions backed by real-time data from the plant floor.
Cisco can help you realize these benefits through:
- Industry-leading enterprise networking solutions delivered across industrial platforms
- Scalable, highly secure, real-time performance predictability and remote access
- Full lifecycle of services to optimize network performance and simplify and automate operations
- Expertise based on Cisco and Rockwell Automation's Converged Plantwide Ethernet validated architecture
- Access to the Cisco partner ecosystem including Rockwell Automation, Honeywell, and Emerson
Factory Wireless
Cisco Connected Factory Wireless offers flexible, plant-wide communications between things, machines, databases and people on the plant floor. This solution builds on the joint Cisco and Rockwell Automation architecture, known as Converged Plantwide Ethernet (CPwE), as well as Cisco’s networking expertise with wireless and wired technologies and includes a new design guide that brings together wireless best practice designs, and tested and validated architectures integrating both IT and OT perspectives. It helps to improve a wide range of operations, including:
- Asset tracking
- Visibility of automation controls
- Wireless tooling
- Mobile video
Creating a wireless network environment on the factory floor cuts costs, while increasing productivity and output. By adding wireless technology to the shop floor, manufacturers can enjoy these business outcomes:
More Flexible Communications
Better communication between machines and people located throughout the plant improves decision-making and optimizes uptime. Operators have instant visibility, without having to walk to a machine to see what is going on.
Easier Management
A unified, easy-to-manage and highly secure plant wireless infrastructure can provide the reliability and performance needed for mission critical plant floor applications (like wireless torque tools).
A World-Class Platform
The platform increases output and productivity by accommodating industrial global applications, such as:
- Wi-Fi asset tags to find production assets and inventory faster
- Mobile HD video cameras for troubleshooting and collaboration
Reliability, Security, Manageability
Now companies can take full advantage of industry-leading wireless capabilities from Cisco not only for IT, but for operational technology (OT) applications. Factory wireless offers:
Reliability
If offers demonstrated reliability for use in closed-control systems, and for ultra-low-latency, motion-control applications.
Security
Get wired-to-wireless access controls and the additional, end-to-end defense benefits of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) with a Cisco wireless environment.
Asset Utilization
Ubiquitous, highly secure, and reliable wireless across plants has resulted in double-digit percentage improvements in asset utilization. It boosts throughput capacity, quality, and yields. For example, it offers new error-proofing workflows that can only be used with an untethered device and GUI access to the automation networks.