RS Connect Insights Part 1: IIoT Technologies

RS Connect 2024 brought members of the industrial supply chain together to share product innovations and expert perspectives on current challenges and emerging trends. This three-part RS Connect Insights series shares exhibiting suppliers’ responses to questions about three timely topics: IIoT technologies, industrial sustainability, and skilled labor shortages

This year’s biennial RS Connect event — RS Connect 24: The Power of Partnership — was held in Arlington, Texas, September 17 and 18, and provided numerous opportunities for industrial business leaders, suppliers, and front-line sellers to share product innovations and perspectives on current challenges and emerging trends in the industrial manufacturing industry. One of these opportunities was a series of panel discussions that invited various industrial automation and manufacturing experts to share insights into topics including the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), industrial sustainability, and skilled labor shortages.

To continue these timely discussions, we asked suppliers exhibiting at RS Connect to share their insights into these three topics, which we’re publishing as a three-part series of succinct interviews.

This first installation of our new RS Connect Insights Series focuses on IIoT technologies as effective solutions for improving operational efficiency, productivity, and operator and equipment safety. These substantial and far-reaching benefits continue to drive the adoption of IIoT technologies throughout the industrial manufacturing industry and beyond. In fact, a recent market research report estimates that there will be 32 to 40 billion connected devices worldwide by the end of 2030 — more than double the amount that existed in 2023!  

But while the enthusiastic adoption of IIoT technologies is actively enabling significant improvements throughout industrial facilities, it’s also introducing challenges related scalability, interoperability, and cybersecurity. Here, three experts weigh in:

• Chad Murff, Vice President of Sales – Gulf Region at Eaton
• Janhavi Shiras, Automation Engineer at Omron
• Noah Greene, Product Marketing Specialist at Phoenix Contact

1. What strategies do you employ to ensure your IIoT solutions are scalable, adaptable, and interoperable in different industries?

Chad: Eaton is implementing strategies for IIoT across multiple product platforms — everything from distribution and controls to control and automation products. Our engineering teams focus on creating compatible platform interfaces, so when customers look at scaling their products, they have the same platform. We also enable them to scale into their customer’s platform utilizing our Brightlayer digital innovation platform. They may have an existing interface system for their manufacturing platform that needs to speak the same language, which we’re able to provide for them.

One of the things that a lot of customers are interested in doing is accessing information remotely. Data on its own is great, but you have to do something with that data. For example, energy management and savings are big topics at the moment. The only way to determine energy usage and savings is by understanding what’s going on with the application. Eaton provides apps equipped with communication capabilities for our different products so they can send key information back to a central location, where the customer can analyze the data, using our Brightlayer platform. This helps users understand when there are peaks in usage and identify opportunities to optimize machine time and usage.

Janhavi: Omron gives our customers the flexibility to choose. As mentioned, our edge device, the NX-102, can connect to other PLC vendors, like Allen Bradley and Siemens. We have libraries that allow customers to communicate over Ethernet, IP, EtherCAT, MQTT, and OPC UA. These libraries address other systems that the customer has as well. We aren’t restricting the customer to using only Omron. Our products are designed to communicate with other vendor devices and systems as well.

As far as pushing the data over to the cloud, we also have an IPC solution that allows customers to have a closed-loop solution or connect to open-source services, like AWS or Microsoft Azure, to display data using open sources, such as Power BI, Grafana, and Ignition. The bottom line is that we can give customers the flexibility to choose their system and vendors while giving them the tools necessary to connect a smart factory floor with minimal interoperability issues.

2. How do you address interoperability issues between your IIoT solutions and existing customer systems?

Janhavi: Omron gives our customers the flexibility to choose. As mentioned, our edge device, the NX-102, can connect to other PLC vendors, like Allen Bradley and Siemens. We have libraries that allow customers to communicate over Ethernet, IP, EtherCAT, QTT, and OPC UA. These libraries address other systems that the customer has as well. We aren’t restricting the customer to using only Omron. Our products are designed to communicate with other vendor devices and systems as well. As far as pushing the data over to the cloud, we also have an IPC solution that allows customers to connect to open-source services, like AWS or Microsoft Azure, to display data using open sources, such as Power BI, Grafana, and Ignition. The bottom line is that we can give customers the flexibility to choose their system and vendors while giving them the tools necessary to connect a smart factory floor with minimal interoperability issues.

Noah: I like to present Phoenix Contact as the Android of automation. Our products play really well with a lot of other field buses, not just the ones we use natively. They have methods to talk with EtherCAT and can operate in different systems that all use their own communication protocols.

We support several communication profiles in our native environment – PLCnext Engineer (PLCNE).  This includes PROFINET, Ethernet/IP (E/IP), and IEC 61850 and J1939, just to name a few. With the open platform of PLCnext, a programmer can also use other integrated development environments (IDEs) to develop code in Python, Node-Red, or Codesys, for example. So, not only can you program the way you want and reuse previously developed code, you can also have many more communication options, like E/IP, EtherCAT, and BACnet. 

Q: What measures do you take to ensure the cybersecurity of your IIoT offerings?

Chad: Cybersecurity is a challenge, which is why Eaton has comprehensive protections that are built into our offerings. Some customers, particularly in critical infrastructure environments, like the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries, are high-profile targets to be hacked by someone with malicious intent. Customers in these industries often don’t want to extend into the cloud for security reasons and, instead, want their ecosystem to be based locally, taking that local system and making sure it’s safely isolated from the rest of the ecosystem. Our products can fulfill that need and can be optimized by our application engineers to set up the system securely.

Noah: To keep things secure, our PLCnext Control Platform is IEC 62443 compliant. This is the international standard that covers how automation network systems should be protected against cyberattacks.

PLCnext has achieved IEC 62443-4-1 and 4-2 certification. 4-1 is secure by design, meaning that the entire product lifecycle management, from conception to development and testing, through to support and patching has integrated security concepts within it. These can include:

• Analysis of threat vectors — identifying where would-be attacks could happen and implementing protections against these attacks
• Testing of the known and unknown types of attacks
• A well-laid-out patch/update/notification process to ensure the devices remain secure over their lifetime. This would include staying on top of vulnerabilities in third-party applications like OpenSSL

4-2 is about actual certified security functions that built into the product, including:

• Type of user authentication and configuration
• Means to encrypt data
• Ensuring that user tasks are not able to be executed in privileged memory contexts

Janhavi: Cybersecurity is a top issue these days, and every company is working with their IT team to protect their internet. Omron gives customers the flexibility to keep their internet as closed-loop systems. Customers can collect all their information locally on our IPCs and prevent it from going out into the internet. In addition to security, this also gives customers speed. It’s 25 times faster to create a closed-loop network than an open-source network. We prevent cybersecurity threats by keeping the solution closed-loop, and we can work with any customers’ networks because we have many different components that we can connect to suit customers’ needs and requirements. We work with customers and keep an open-box solution.

Dive Deeper

Although Industry 4.0 technologies like IIoT devices are now well established and widely implemented, the industrial market is still in the midst of a rapid digital transformation, with new technologies emerging and experiencing increased adoption to help overcome persistent challenges related to efficiency, productivity, operator and equipment safety, interoperability, scalability, and cybersecurity. So, it’s crucial to stay future focused and keep up with the latest insights and trends that will continue to alter and enhance industrial factory environments.

To learn more about these and related topics, including innovations in edge computing, AI, connectivity, IO-Link, sensors, automation and control systems, and other technologies engineered to overcome common challenges in industrial manufacturing environments, click the links embedded here and visit our RS Expert Advice Series page to see what’s new.

For more expert insights from exhibiting suppliers at RS Connect, keep an eye out for RS Connect Insights Part 2: Industrial Sustainability and Part 3: Skilled Labor Shortages.

To learn more about IIoT and other digital factory solutions available from the manufacturers featured here, check out the RS manufacturer spotlight pages for Eaton, Omron, and Phoenix Contact.