In any manufacturing environment one of the key targets is to be as efficient and productive as possible. This can be achieved through any number of means, but one is to use data gathered from the factory floor, analyse it and from the results establish where there is room for improvement.

For example, it is often found that there is an information “black hole” between the production and management levels. If this gap is closed it becomes possible to provide real-time production data to the MES system, which in turn facilitates the fine-tuning of the manufacturing process.

One option is to standardise onto TCP/IP over Ethernet as the preferred communication channel between the IT world and production lines. However, this involves connecting all S5 PLC controlled production lines via Ethernet to the MES system.

One way to tackle this is to equip each S5 PLC with an Ethernet Communication Processor (CP). However, this approach does have disadvantages: