Consider for a moment the traditional manufacturing floor. Whatever the industry, whatever the parts or products being assembled, each point in the production line involves a complex process for moving from one stage to the next. The smallest hiccup at any point along that line can shut the entire system down until an engineer arrives on site to assess and repair the situation. Now consider a manufacturing floor plugged in to the cloud. The same production line is monitored in real time using Internet-connected controllers by a field engineer or facility manager who isn’t even on site. That engineer or manager taps into the cloud’s stored data at any time and communicates instantly with the controllers powering the equipment to make changes accordingly. ALSO SEE: Manufacturing Cyber Security Guide This is modern manufacturing. New developments in automation and wireless that were once on the fringes of industrial engineering are making their way into more and more facilities around the country. Whether they’re right next to a machine and plugged in via PC, or remote via smartphone or tablet, engineers now have more control thanks to the cloud. Not only can an engineer monitor the production line for quality assurance and status updates, but also to make direct changes to the line without having to set foot inside the factory. Bottling is a big industry in the United States, and a great example of this practice. One milliliter of measurement is enough to throw an entire bottling system into disarray. An engineer remotely monitoring the fill levels of a bottling facility can use Internet-connected PLCs to program new instructions that would increase or decrease the volume almost instantaneously. The same can be done within “hard” manufacturing. Robots loading a PC board with components rely on measurements that come down to […]