The IIC Announces Results for Smart Manufacturing Connectivity Testbed

The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) recently announced results for the Smart Manufacturing Connectivity for Brown-field Sensors Testbed. IIC member participants TE Connectivity and SAP SE, with supporting participants OPC Foundation and ifm, developed a solution that enables operators of decades old manufacturing facilities (brown-fields) to connect sensors to an IT system using existing infrastructure without affecting real-time operations. “In discrete manufacturing, the real-time manufacturing sub-systems are generally managed by Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) that make use of data provided by various sensors,” said Dr. Michael Hilgner, Manager Consortia and Standards, TE Connectivity. “However, PLCs in most brown-field facilities are outdated and can’t handle more work beyond the original automation task such as processing a high volume of data required for added value services. So we replaced the existing I/O module with a Y-Gateway to pull sensor data from real-time control systems and sent it directly to IT systems via an additional channel.”