Your requirements

Do you want to bring new products quickly onto the market? And at the same time be flexible and in a position to change your product range at short notice and shorten your time-to market? Do you want to be able to manufacture efficiently at low costs? And at the same time optimize the capacity of your plant/machine and minimize possible downtimes?

Then all the machines in your plant should work together perfectly. Therefore, you rely upon open, integrated automation communication not just within the whole company but also for external communication. Avoid isolated automation and information technology solutions by assuring:

• Continuous flow of information from the actuator/sensor level through to the corporate management level
• Availability of information at any location
• High-speed data exchange between the different plant sections
• Easy, plant-wide configuration and efficient diagnostics
• Integrated security functions that block unauthorized access
• Fail-safe and standard communication via the same connection

Our range

Communication networks are of utmost importance for automation solutions. SIMATIC NET – Networking for Industry – stands for a diverse range of modular blocks – Designed for Industry – which contribute to efficiently solving your communications tasks:

• In the different automation areas
• Across the entire workflow
• For the complete plant life cycle
• For all industries

SIMATIC NET offers solutions which both maximize the benefits of Ethernet and simply integrate fieldbus systems. Noticeable examples are:

• The development of the field level for the use of Industrial Ethernet
• Complete integration from the field level to the corporate management level
• Implementation of state-of-the-art solutions with mobile and wireless communication
• The integration of IT technologies

Worldwide trends

Decentralization has been gaining worldwide importance for a number of years now. A distributed plant structure can reduce installation, maintenance and diagnostics costs. This involves intelligent devices working locally and being connected together across networks. Openness and flexibility are important in order to expand existing setups and to connect up different systems. For this reason, international committees define and standardize the standards for bus systems.