A typical plant’s network, a five-layer hierarchy from sensors to the enterprise resource planning level, is evolving toward a new “Industry 4.0” architecture where everything is completely interconnected.
In a recent Control System Integrators Association (CSIA)-hosted webinar entitled “Help your clients migrate to Industry 4.0,” Samy Achour, CEO of Integration Objects (a CSIA partner member) described the smart manufacturing architecture and its ability to allow collected data to be used simultaneously for process data and sensor device integrity, as well as asset “health checks,” for example, vibration sensors on motors or gearboxes.