Electric energy operators around the world are working to increase reliability, resiliency and capacity with smart investments in new technologies. This includes Stadtwerke Karlsruhe Netzservice GmbH (SWKN), the municipal utility that provides electricity, gas, water and heating to the 300,000 inhabitants of the city of Karlsruhe in southwestern Germany.

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is changing both automation systems and business systems. Standard Internet technologies are penetrating deeper into control systems and many more things are being connected to the factory network. In parallel, additional data is flowing into and out of industrial control systems, leading to business benefits such as better asset utilization, lower energy consumption and improved supply chain management.

This week a major step forward in Industrial Ethernet is being demonstrated at the Belden Booth at the Hanover Fair (Hall 9, Booth D11) in Germany. It’s a live demonstration of Hirschmann Ethernet switches using the IEEE 802.1 time sensitive networking (TSN) standard to allow the simultaneous transmission of critical control plus best-effort background traffic.

Nowadays, manufacturing businesses rely heavily on their automation, instrumentation and control data communications for industrial networking. When it comes to relaying signals between devices, machinery and the control system, there’s no margin for error. Indeed network availability of 99.999 percent uptime or better is often the goal. Given this reality, a robust industrial Ethernet infrastructure consisting of environmentally-hardened network cabling, connectivity and active components is essential to long-term performance and reliability.

The goals of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) are the same goals that industry has had forever: reducing downtime, cutting costs and staying competitive. What’s different about the next industrial revolution is how the goals will be met. This time the breakthrough in innovation involves interconnectivity and the self-regulation of machines, along with a dose of Big Data, to drive continuous improvement processes.