Resolving Industrial IoT Manufacturing Delays With NETSCOUT
Company Size
1,000+
Country
- United States
Product
- nGeniusONE® Service Assurance platform
- NETSCOUT® InfiniStreamNG® appliances
- vSTREAM® virtual agents
Tech Stack
- Human-Machine Interface (HMI) technology
- Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA)
- Programmable logic controllers (PLCs)
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Cost Savings
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
- Functional Applications - Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES)
- Functional Applications - Remote Monitoring & Control Systems
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
- Maintenance
Use Cases
- Manufacturing System Automation
- Predictive Maintenance
Services
- System Integration
- Testing & Certification
About The Customer
This global manufacturer navigated pandemic-related business challenges by expanding their e-commerce channels to supplement traditional distribution to brick-and-mortar retailers. Their earlier investments in factory robotics helped sustain manufacturing operations during the company’s own remote workforce transition. During this timeframe, the company also improved data center operations by transitioning from an outsourced to insourced model, with information technology (IT) operations using NETSCOUT solutions to enhance service visibility and real-time performance analysis.
The Challenge
The company had deployed a vendor’s productivity and process control solution that offered Human-Machine Interface (HMI) technology to connect plant floor operators to production-level manufacturing systems. In addition, this vendor technology offered Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) support to manufacturing operations. In supporting this solution, the manufacturer used hundreds of programmable logic controllers (PLCs) across plant floors to support their factory automation efforts. However, one performance issue that impacted the vendor productivity and process control solution proved difficult to resolve. In responding to related plant floor operators’ support requests, IT Operators saw performance latency in the productivity and process control technology was responsible for manufacturing delays, but they were unable to identify root cause despite their best efforts to do so.
The Solution
The manufacturer’s IT team was again able to derive additional return from the NETSCOUT investment by using nGeniusONE Service Assurance real-time performance monitoring and smart data generated by deployed InfiniStreamNG (ISNG) appliances and vSTREAM virtual appliances to determine that latency in the PLC environment was causing issues earlier attributed to the productivity and process control solution. By employing nGeniusONE performance analytics that used smart data generated by ISNG and vSTREAM from network packet traffic traversing that manufacturing plant’s operations, NETSCOUT collaborated with Manufacturing Floor Technicians and the facility’s Plant Architect to show them a high number of PLC retransmissions as the root cause of this issue.
Operational Impact
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