"Industrial Local Area Networks - Technologies and Techniques for the Shop Floor"
Mark Witkowski and Bill Cargill
Manufacturing Communications Today, IMechE, Birmingham, March 1988
ABSTRACT
This paper discusses several aspects relating to the use of Industrial Local Area Networks (ILANs) in the context of manufacturing. Given that there are many networking technologies available, this paper seeks to address three main questions arising during any selection process:
It will become clear throughout this paper that ILAN technology forms only a
part of a much larger information and computing environment. Indeed networking
is often referred to as an "enabling technology", it facilitates
gains that are achieved by coordinating a number of diverse activities. Some of
these activities are technological, some organisational, and some financial.
It
is the intention of this paper to concentrate on industrial networking
appropriate to use on the 'shop-floor'. There are several factors which
distinguish these networks from general purpose data transfer networks, commonly
used to link general purpose computers. ILAN technology will be considered
through three aspects, transmission media, data transfer method, and the purpose
of the data transmission.
In an ideal world it would only be necessary
to consider the purpose of the data transfer. All devices could be
interconnected by attaching appropriate cabling, and the data shared between the
devices would always have a clearly understood meaning between sender and
recipient. For this to be the case all aspects of communications across the
network must be tightly controlled. The formalisation of international standards
represents a most potent tool, and the definition of the Manufacturing
Automation Protocol (MAP) is considered.