Edge computing is increasingly becoming essential for optimising data-driven activities, facilitating the deployment of cutting-edge digital technologies, and ultimately paving the way for the smart factories of the future. By processing critical data near its origin, the Edge transforms raw information into actionable insights. Advanced network technologies are the cornerstone of successful enterprises that utilise Edge computing to enhance their competitiveness.
Tom Burke, Global Strategic Advisor at the CC-Link Partner Association (CLPA) Americas, explores how to harness the benefits of the Edge with sophisticated industrial communication solutions. Smart applications and technologies are generating data in unprecedented volumes, laying the groundwork for a comprehensive understanding of equipment status, processes, and activities. This can be translated into unique actionable insights to boost productivity, performance, and efficiency.
Competitive enterprises also require large datasets, but a robust, reliable infrastructure for sharing process data, information, and knowledge is equally crucial for success. Furthermore, Edge computing plays a vital role in developing frameworks capable of evaluating data quickly and securely.
This technology performs analytics for real-time decision-making at the network’s periphery, close to where data is generated, while supporting knowledge generation by filtering what should be sent to the Cloud or other higher-level systems. As a result, the Edge can reduce latency and network costs, optimise bandwidth usage, and enhance speed, security, and scalability. Moreover, it can achieve improved transparency, flexibility, and availability.
At the forefront of industrial networks, to leverage the opportunities provided by Edge computing, it’s important to establish a suitable network. Specifically, the ideal solution should support the key features of this technology.
An optimal industrial communications system should enable a converged architecture, allowing real-time process traffic and asynchronous process data to share the same network without compromising the system’s overall functionality. This is made possible through a foundation of determinism, ensuring that all data types flow across the network in a predictable manner, delivering the necessary performance.
The key to achieving this deterministic, converged architecture is Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN). TSN allows critical data running the process to coexist with equally vital, albeit less time-sensitive, process data. This latter data type is crucial for the Edge server. Utilising TSN means these important but diverse traffic streams can use a single network architecture, saving costs, simplifying maintenance, and reducing project times.
Secondly, companies should seek an open solution that provides maximum connectivity. This involves supporting communications with various devices, whether on the shop floor or higher up in the automation hierarchy. Therefore, openness, interoperability, and an integrated solution for automation at different levels are essential.
The CLPA has long been capable of offering network technologies that enable Edge applications, starting with CC-Link IE, an open gigabit industrial Ethernet leveraging a token-passing method and 1 Gbit/s bandwidth. The various versions of CC-Link IE networks, complementing each other and covering different aspects of industrial communications, could connect the diverse components of an enterprise required to create Connected Industries.
The organisation’s latest development, CC-Link IE TSN, advances further in supporting Edge computing by enhancing and expanding this solution’s capabilities with TSN, delivering the aforementioned capabilities. Ultimately, by selecting CC-Link IE TSN compatible components, businesses can secure a unique competitive advantage in the marketplace.
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