What the solution includes

The main difference from an office is the physical conditions and the cost of stopping. The requirements for each block follow from that.

Discuss the scope

Shop-floor network

Fibre between buildings, industrial switches in protected cabinets and separate segments for equipment and the office.

Wi-Fi on the shop floor

A wireless survey accounting for metal and interference, ruggedised access points and seamless roaming for terminals and tablets.

Servers and accounting systems

Capacity for 1C and production accounting, virtualisation, redundant nodes and a server room with cooling and power.

Workstations in production areas

Dust- and moisture-protected hardware, data collection terminals, industrial monitors and label printers.

Power and redundancy

UPS units for the server room and key network nodes, graceful system shutdown and spares for critical components.

Support across the shifts

The duty line works at night and at weekends. A request from the night shift is handled to the same target as a daytime one.

How we start on site

In manufacturing you cannot simply turn up and switch equipment over. The work is planned around shutdowns and maintenance windows.

01

Site walkthrough

We inspect the workshops, the cable routes, the server room and the conditions: temperature, dust, vibration, sources of interference and access between buildings.

02

Design and sequence

We draw up the network design and the work plan around planned shutdowns so the production line is not touched during a working shift.

03

Installation in stages

Building by building, keeping the rest operational. Every line is tested with an instrument and labelled.

04

Support

Node monitoring, scheduled maintenance during shutdown windows and a duty line matched to the shift pattern.

Network segmentation in manufacturing is also a security measure. Equipment with process controllers must not sit on the same network as office computers and email. Ransomware that arrives through an accountant inbox must never reach the production line.

Frequently asked questions

Metal structures reflect and block the signal, while frequency converters and welding create interference. An office access point placed roughly in the middle covers a fraction of the area the manufacturer promises. What is needed is an on-site survey and a layout based on its results, not on the floor plan.

We are responsible for the IT side: the network, servers, workstations, accounting systems and security. The machines and process controllers themselves are configured by their suppliers, but we provide the connectivity, the segmentation and the link to accounting. The boundary of responsibility is set out in the contract in writing.

Mostly yes, if it is planned ahead: new cable routes are installed alongside the existing ones and the switchover is done segment by segment. A full stop is rarely needed and usually lasts an hour or two when the core node is replaced. Such windows are agreed with production weeks in advance.

For shift-based production we offer a plan with a round-the-clock duty line and a response from 15 minutes for critical incidents. The target is the same at any hour of the day, and that is exactly what such a plan pays for.

We will come to the site

Tell us about your production site: how many buildings, what equipment and how the shifts run. We will walk the site and propose a design.