Project Introduction

Location: China

Project Name: ORing-Factory Automation for Chinese Food Processing Company

Products Deployed: IES-3082GP,RGS-PR9000

Project Requirement 

● Industrial design with robust resistance to harsh working environments
● Fast self-healing ability
● Ability to handle large multicast/broadcast traffic
● Support remote monitoring

Solution

A leading Chinese food processing company needed to build an automated control system for its grain & oil production line, allowing the staff to monitor production processes anytime and anywhere, thus ensuring product quality and enhancing production efficiency and safety. The automated control system must monitor every element on the production line including the boiler room and control room. Several PLCs have been installed on the production line, with each PLC in charge of one process. To transmit data from the PLCs to the control center, the company needed to establish a redundant network, enabling the staff to review data at any time and keep an eye on the conditions of the production equipment.

To connect the PLCs in the boiler room, control room, distiller room, sugar refinery room, and starch processing room, the company deployed ORing’s IES-3082GP managed Ethernet switches at the access layer. Besides connecting to the PLCs through Fast Ethernet ports, the switches formed a ring topology through the two Gigabit SFP ports to enable ORing’s proprietary O-Ring technology. Featuring self-healing capabilities in less than 10ms, O-Ring technology can ensure zero data loss. Installation of the switches was very easy due to their DIN-rail design and compact size. The wide operating temperature range and a MTBF of 770,000 hours also ensures reliable operation of the switches in harsh working environments. At the aggregation layer in the control center, a L3 RGS-PR9000 industrial Ethernet switch is deployed. The modular design of the switch provides a high level of operational flexibility and network scalability. To ensure the security of the production line, ORing’s switches support dual-redundant networks. The A/B network design allows for simultaneous data transmission. When A network fails, data will be sent through B network. ORing’s proprietary O-Ring redundancy technology plays a key role in the dual-redundant networks, significantly increasing network availability and production efficiency.

Due to the large multi-cast traffic from PLCs, ORing’s switch provides IGMP v2/v3 (IGMP snooping) function to prevent traffic congestion, thus ensuring network reliability during broadcast storms.

System Structure

Why ORing

● Comprehensive industrial Ethernet switch solutions including access and aggregate switches
● Support IGMP snooping to maintain network reliability during broadcast storms
● O-Ring network redundancy technology with self-healing in less than 10ms (250 nodes)
● Industrial-grade design with a wide temperature range between -40℃ and 70℃