Tips and Tricks: 9 tips for a smarter wireless industrial workforce
Nine tips help enable an industrial wireless mobile workforce, including standards, self-healing technologies, and the right blend of hardware and software.
Peter Granger
These nine tips help with selecting, integrating, and enabling an industrial wireless mobile workforce.
1) Standards-based solutions: Ensure suppliers provide open standards based solutions—this is particularly important when choosing wireless mobility systems.
2) Self-healing wireless: System integrators can provide good interference detection and mitigation wireless solutions that can automatically change channels to maintain continuity, which reduces operating expenses.
3) Hardware vs. software: It is better to use wireless systems with specialized hardware and software implementation rather than the older software implementations when analyzing interference.
4) Security is paramount: Look for systems that can display and map any devices that affect security and that provide the ability to customize alerts by location, for example, a specific floor of a building.
5) Involve the workers: Employees are far more positive when involved in the projects as part of the feedback process.
6) Evolve standards: As the industry matures, companies will partner to bring together the best of their expertise. Some products will be jointly branded to satisfy the IT engineer and the controls and automation engineer.
7) iPads on the plant floor: Newer generations of workers are increasingly mobile, increasingly technophile, and are expecting mobile tools and devices to do their jobs.
8) Solutions with rogue access detection: Intrusion detection systems and intrusion prevention systems have been designed to address security issues, such as how rogue access points can open up security holes in an enterprise or controls network.
9) Impact of video: Simple devices like wireless video cameras or analog cordless phones can accidentally cause a total jamming of your network. Integrated spectrum intelligence and spectrum management are very effective for identifying these types of security threats.
- Peter Granger is senior manager, Cisco Systems. Edited by Mark T. Hoske, content manager, CFE Media, Control Engineering. This is part of the March 2012 cover story for the Control Engineering North American print and digital edition.
http://controleng.com/wireless
- Related News:
Automation to go - 12.03.2012 11:18- Industrial mobility: Information where needed - 29.02.2012 17:34
- Mobile workers respond to alarms, view data logs - 29.02.2012 17:31
- Mobile industrial worker - 28.02.2012 07:47
Case Study Database
Get more exposure for your case study by uploading it to the Plant Engineering case study database, where end-users can identify relevant solutions and explore what the experts are doing to effectively implement a variety of technology and productivity related projects.
These case studies provide examples of how knowledgeable solution providers have used technology, processes and people to create effective and successful implementations in real-world situations. Case studies can be completed by filling out a simple online form where you can outline the project title, abstract, and full story in 1500 words or less; upload photos, videos and a logo.
Click here to visit the Case Study Database and upload your case study.
2012 Salary Survey
In a year when manufacturing continued to lead the economic rebound, it makes sense that plant manager bonuses rebounded. Plant Engineering’s annual Salary Survey shows both wages and bonuses rose in 2012 after a retreat the year before.
Average salary across all job titles for plant floor management rose 3.5% to $95,446, and bonus compensation jumped to $15,162, a 4.2% increase from the 2010 level and double the 2011 total, which showed a sharp drop in bonus.