Ethernet gaining favor on more factory floors

CHICAGO - Industrial Ethernet products that can lower operating costs and help manufacturers run their shops more efficiently will be a key focus of next week's National Manufacturing Week trade show.

Industrial product announcements from Cisco and others could go a long way toward advancing the factory floor's long-anticipated move to Ethernet, replacing older, special-purpose technologies. The desire to converge factory networks and use less-costly office technology is driving the shift.

Cisco, HP, IBM, J.D. Edwards, PeopleSoft, Novell, SAP and Sun will be among the 140 IT companies displaying wares at the show.

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CHICAGO - Industrial Ethernet products that can lower operating costs and help manufacturers run their shops more efficiently will be a key focus of next week's National Manufacturing Week trade show.

Industrial product announcements from Cisco and others could go a long way toward advancing the factory floor's long-anticipated move to Ethernet, replacing older, special-purpose technologies. The desire to converge factory networks and use less-costly office technology is driving the shift.

Cisco, HP, IBM, J.D. Edwards, PeopleSoft, Novell, SAP and Sun will be among the 140 IT companies displaying wares at the show.

Cisco will announce the Catalyst 2955, a 12-port 10/100M bit/sec switch aimed at factory floor networks. The switch is designed to link programmable logic controllers (PLC), which control the operating of machinery on a factory or plant floor, and relay data about equipment and industrial processes to monitoring and control applications.

While Cisco and others have sold standard 19-inch stackable switches for use in manufacturing applications, those products sometimes created problems, according to Carl Staab, manager of communication technology product development at Emerson Process, Power and Water Solutions in St.Louis. Staab's company, which makes process-control equipment for water and electrical utilities and sewer treatment plants, will start using the Catalyst 2955 in the control systems it sells to utilities because of its ruggedness and small size, features that are key for the device to be installed inside factory-equipment cabinets.

The Catalyst 2955 uses no fans, which can break down or suck in dust in a factory environment, and runs on a 24-volt DC current, which is the standard for industrial equipment. The box also can include two single-mode or multimode Fast Ethernet fiber uplink ports.