Industrial Automation & Connectivity Project Guide

Automation projects turn on three questions: what is being controlled, what has to talk to what, and what has to be safe. Establish those and the hardware follows.

Selection Requirements to Establish

Work through what you can. Anything still undecided is exactly what a conversation with our engineers is for.

01Control and I/O

  • Existing control platform or PLC family, or whether the platform is open
  • Digital and analogue I/O counts, with signal types and ranges
  • Distributed or centralised I/O, and the distances involved
  • Sensors and actuators already specified
  • HMI, panel or supervisory visualisation required

02Networks and data

  • Fieldbus and industrial Ethernet protocols in use
  • IO-Link devices and master requirements
  • Determinism and cycle time the application demands
  • Where the data goes: SCADA, historian, MES, ERP or cloud
  • OPC UA, MQTT or REST integration, and any edge processing needed
  • Data logging, buffering and retention

03Safety and installation

  • Safety functions required, and the performance level or SIL to be met
  • Emergency stop, guarding, light curtains and interlocks
  • Enclosure rating, ambient temperature and installation location
  • Power supply, UPS and earthing arrangement
  • Standards and documentation required for acceptance