These are only 2 out of the 5 most important reasons to put a robust switching system such as Cisco Catalyst 9000 into your network along with wireless. Cisco IOS® XE for both wired and wireless means less complexity, as with one common OS, the network is easier to troubleshoot and manage (Click here to get the full document with the 5 benefits) Additionally, Cisco Catalyst 9000 has hardware-enabled encryption that keeps data secure, and the whole supply chain security is delivered through trustworthy solutions. Other factors to consider are the possibility to utilise optimised bandwidth for Wi-Fi 6, eliminating Ethernet bottlenecks with next-gen access points and multigigabit switches. Furthermore, with a secure industrial network that is integrated, your manufacturing plant will be able to have higher availability, as you will have an easy to configure wireless to minimise downtime and gain visibility end to end with telemetry and open APIs. Finally, you will provide your IT team, operators and facility managers with easy to control traffic applications with compatible Quality-of-Service (QoS) configurations. See the next infographic to know more about Polestar & Cisco Catalyst 9000 Switching + Wireless solution: Connect, manage, and secure all your assets anywhere with confidence. #Industry40TechnologiesUK

What if you could take your “indoor” network – that you know and trust – anywhere? What if you could securely connect your assets in outdoor or industrial spaces? What if you could manage it all from a single pane of glass? What if there was a simple solution that could do it all? Look no further, because Cisco Industrial Networking helps you do all of that with security, scalability, and agility. Cisco Industrial Networking enables you to extend your network anywhere, providing: Security: Manage security with policy-based automation, complete visibility and control, and assurance across all network areas. Scalability: Leverage Cisco’s software-centric, automated approach to scale. Agility: Shorten deployment cycles with the Cisco Catalyst® solutions you know. Manage all network devices with the same tools you already own and trust. Flexibility: Deploy devices that can withstand dust, water, extreme temperatures, and vibration. To know more about Polestar & Cisco Industrial Networking just Download the following document: Key components include: Cisco Catalyst IE3200, IE3300, and IE3400 Rugged Series switches provide full Gigabit Ethernet speeds and advanced features for handling large amounts of real-time data in a modular and optimized design. They are hardened to withstand extreme temperature exposure as well as severe shock and vibration. Cisco Catalyst IE3400 Heavy Duty Series switches have a robust and innovative feature set and are ideal for the harshest environments, as they are dustproof and waterproof (IP67 rated). Scale with centralized and consistent policy management across the entire network. Enable intent-based networking all the way to the IoT edge with Cisco DNA Center. Connect, manage, and secure all your assets anywhere with confidence. Click here to get the full document. #Industry40TechnologiesUK

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been with us since the early noughties, and in theory it isn't more complicated than IT networks and devices connecting "things" to the internet to make them visible from virtually anywhere, and to collect their performance data to make informed decisions on their operation. Smart mobile devices, smart metering, and even smart motorways are just a few of the applications of IoT. However, in the business and commercial sectors, the adoption of IoT technologies – often termed IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) has been a slower process. The IIoT movement has been spearheaded by industry leaders such as Cisco, Siemens and Rockwell Automation. Germany, Denmark and Japan have been the countries with the largest numbers of early adopters. But how does IIoT differ from IoT? IIoT refers solely to the manufacturing environment - whereas the term IoT is more widely used in the consumer environment. IIoT is a mixture of machine-to-machine (M2M) communications and big data technologies. This is achieved by harvesting sensor data and integrating it into high levels of automation. Watch Jeff Lund, IoT Product Director at Cisco, on how Industrial Networking Solutions are key to enable IIoT on multiple environments: The concept behind IIoT is that smart machines and automated systems are better than humans at capturing and communicating data accurately. This data can enable companies to identify inefficiencies and problems before they become too costly. In the manufacturing sector, IIoT holds great potential for quality control, sustainability and environmentally friendly practices, supply chain traceability and greater operational efficiency. Although IIoT has been hailed as key to Digital Transformation and manufacturing growth, many companies in the UK are still lagging behind their European counterparts in implementing it. This may be because some governments have recognised that IIoT has the capability to transform the way their home companies do business, effectively also making it a social movement. European Leadership on IIoT In Europe the 'Mittelstand' (Small and Medium-sized enterprises within German speaking countries) are already amongst the biggest users of industrial technology. Having understood the potential of IIoT, these companies are adopting the technologies and training their staff accordingly. Significant government support has empowered them to aim for flexible manufacturing and innovation to increase output. In the UK, businesses have not enjoyed the same level of support. Even so, industry in the ‘Northern Powerhouse’, centred around the core cities of Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and Newcastle, have made significant progress on their own initiative. In Europe the 'Mittelstand' (Small and Medium-sized enterprises within German speaking countries) are already amongst the biggest users of industrial technology. Having understood the potential of IIoT, these companies are adopting the technologies and training their staff accordingly. Nevertheless, specialists say that British companies have barely scratched the surface, and that they need to do much more if they are to capitalise on IIoT and Industry 4.0. So, if IIoT makes perfect economic sense, What’s stopping UK's PLCs from getting stuck in? Challenges for UK Manufacturers The biggest challenge is the lack of investment in training and education which means preserving skills and an ageing workforce have become growing constraints on productivity. The engineering sector has been hit the hardest by the lack of skills and this is why new technologies fall by the wayside for many businesses, as their primary focus is to find and retain good workers to keep up production levels. Digitisation is not going to be an ‘employment problem’ – it’s an opportunity to (re-)train the next generation of skilled, competent and entrepreneurial staff. With persistent Government involvement, education and training, youngsters could be steered towards STEM disciplines. Our young people require more classes on creating software, learning electrical applications and generally gaining an appreciation of practical and analytical skills. The second challenge is the mentality of UK industry leaders; many people in the IT industry are preoccupied with upselling instead of focusing on customisation, reliability and taking controlled risks for their customers. It is therefore hardly surprising that IT is not trusted and is seen as immature or even a threat. Industry needs to be 'wooed' by IT vendors – it does not need fast changing technology and 'the next best thing' to dictate its requirements. IT vendors need to build products that will last for years and which meet high availability standards. Raising awareness is undoubtedly the key to change. This can be achieved by creating regional centres of excellence and targeting local business communities to inform and educate them (socialising). They are already doing this in Holland – they call it 'Smart Industry'. Determining when and where to invest in new manufacturing technology has never been more risky or more crucial to success, but with a few incentives from the government and increased interest in STEM disciplines the UK could become an industrial powerhouse rivalling the Mittelstand. Easy, ja!? - Julian Smith, Polestar Industrial IT #IIoT #IndustrialIT #IndustrialNetworking #IoT #UKManufacturing

The first of our 2021 webinar series! Get tips, solutions and real case studies from the experts to achieve energy efficiency and savings in your Food Manufacturing Enterprise. Masterclass Recording (Read the Memories Below): How to Increase Efficiency and Save Money in Food Manufacturing? It can sometimes feel that manufacturing and refrigeration power consumption are an uncontrolled cost centre. Interested in getting the right tools to achieve peak plant performance? Visit the solution's website at: https://www.polestarinteractive.com/energy-management Or contact us for an IIoT & Energy Efficiency consultancy! Food manufacturers are also under pressure to cut costs and save money. This has only been heightened by the uncertainty of the Covid-19 pandemic. Through better energy efficiency, food manufacturers can lower their bills, increase their equipment uptime, and ensure peak performance. An added benefit is sustainability and a lower carbon footprint. Along with Crowley Carbon, we explore the possibilities for plant directors, facility managers and site engineers. We’ll literally give you more energy this year! Topics to be discussed will be: IIoT Strategy and how Industry 4.0 Technology can help to boost productivity. Realistically achieving efficiency from Capex and production. How to collect and understand production data. Fast, Simple and Accurate reporting with understandable and relevant KPIs. Understanding the flow of energy and the energy usage of your facility. Tools for CSR and CI. Why there is a need to connect manufacturing plants to Industry 4.0 technologies? To state the obvious, it is to drive continuous improvement. One of the ways of doing it is by generating process optimisation and energy efficiencies that help to save money and cut costs. Industry 4.0 definitely helps to make that a reality. What is Industry 4.0? Industry 4.0 technologies include advanced robotics; artificial intelligence; sophisticated sensors; cloud computing; the Internet of Things; data capture and analytics; digital fabrication (including 3D printing); software-as-a-service, the rise of mobile devices; platforms that use algorithms to direct objects (including industrial robots and even simple CNC machinery); and the embedding of all these elements in an interoperable global value chain. Under the Industry 4.0 model, production can take place in simulated environments and utilise digital tools to model production models, processes, and productive outputs such as performance statistics. The networks of machinery in a smart factory become hyper-aware systems of highly flexible technology, responding rapidly not just to human commands but to their own perceptions and self-direction. ‘Industrial Internet’, IoT, or the ‘Digital Factory’, is one of the big four set of technologies that are key within a Smart manufacturing project. While Industry 3.0 was focused on the automation of single machines and processes, Industry 4.0 focuses on the end-to-end digitisation of all physical assets and integration into digital ecosystems with value chain partners. That requires, setting up stable and safe connectivity to collect, measure, and analyse data to predict and automate business processes. Its relevance is such, that, according to a survey performed by Deloitte in 2020 (The Fourth Industrial Revolution Report), 72% CXOs view IIoT as the set of technologies that will have the most profound impact on organisations. Opportunities of Industry 4.0 for Food Manufacturers The food industry is intrinsically built up of a combination of technology, machinery, people and ingredients. All these are variable. Effectively running a food manufacturing company means coping with change to a great extent. Therefore, being predictive and getting ahead of change is crucial, as is preparation to manage the risks, challenges and seize the opportunities. The way we see things at Polestar is… how can we use the ‘Internet of Things’ or in other words, connecting devices and sensors to the Internet to enable a strong, resilient and productive environment? By implementing an IIoT project, you can monitor more accurately the environmental conditions for the sourcing of food products. Being able to predict, you have the ability to create metrics which can then go to the manufacturer to enable them to optimise, streamline and calibrate their processes. This type of implementation brings competitive advantages in your product market. First movers expect to gain significant benefits from their more advanced digital capabilities and greater levels of investment. They are far more likely to be forecasting both revenue gains of more than 30% and cost reduction of more than 30% at the same time. They’re more likely to expect efficiency gains too (Industry 4.0: Global Digital Operations Study 2018. PWC, 2018) What is more, according to a survey by PwC in 2020 across Operation Managers in different industries, more than half of respondents expect their Industry 4.0 investments to yield a return within two years or less, given investment of around 5% p.a. of their annual revenue. The Challenges of Implementation for Food Manufacturers Industry 4.0 initiatives come with several challenges. These are obstacles related with management, leadership and politics, IT/OT convergence, investment rejection, and the ability to get data the right from the machines. First. Within our experience in the Food Industry, we’ve seen as a great challenge addressing variability in production: sites can vary enormously between the very small with people making products manually, to the very large with process areas across several buildings on multi-acre sites. Additionally, implementation of new products, new machines and new lines can take time and requires a lot of planning. So, it’s important when undertaking smart factory projects to prepare the business with the right leadership, policies and set of skills beforehand. Second. Historically, the information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) departments within manufacturing companies have functioned mostly independently. Operations kept the plant running smoothly, and IT managed business applications from the front office. Nevertheless, for implementing an Industry 4.0 project, is important that both teams communicate and align with each other. The operational data that OT teams use to support real-time decision making can create additional value for the company. But they also need the support of their IT colleagues to make the data meaningful and accessible for use across the organisation. Their IT colleagues can also help them better align with business systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools and manufacturing execution systems (MES). Third. Getting data from machines can be difficult, then constructing the (right) KPIs and finally transform them into actionable information. Industry 4.0 technologies transform data and transport it to places where people can use it, understand it and make management decisions. Today, #Brexit, #COVID19, and the need to be more agile and innovative to position products in tougher markets has made Industry 4.0 less of a trend and more of a movement. But the truth is, most food manufacturers are still back in the 1990s with Industry 3.0 technologies and if you can’t measure, you can’t optimise. The challenge is how to get the right type of networks, sensors and integration of control systems that will allow the capturing of relevant data that helps the business to achieve a better ROI. An IIoT Strategy to Achieve Peak Plant Performance We have developed a set of strategies with five technology adoption stages that help any manufacturing company to realistically become a Smart Factory and start reaching peak plant performance. Assessing: Evaluation of where you are at now in terms of digital maturity and set clear targets for the next five years (assessing your IIoT Readiness and Strategy). Then, looking at the governance and management structures you have in place that assist and approve the budgets of projects, as well as the infrastructure and skills needed to implement the right Industry 4.0 technologies. Understanding the impact: How the technology helps food and drink manufacturers decide on the best intervention. We help make sure that technology adoption is the right one and level for each type of business (wheel/star stages). Defining IT/OT Convergence Policies: This to enable digital manufacturing transformation, including: enabling real-time decision making through edge computing, eliminating unplanned downtime through predictive maintenance, deploying wireless technology on the factory floor and ensuring cybersecurity for a new world of connected machines. Learning the value of Data: How to build direct links between data, decision-making and intelligent systems design. How to develop the right KPIs for starting to predict and control variability, and finally generate operational improvements and ROI. Stages of Industry 4.0 Implementation From the technology perspective, there are many levels of maturity on the way to connected factories, smart factories or industry 4.0 and these terms mean different things to different people but essentially its digital transformation for manufacturing companies, or more precisely: Industrial IoT Digital Twins Cyber Physical Systems Companies can take advantage of ALL 3, but you need to implement them successfully in the order shown (1-5) so you can realise the fully automated future. Many companies have been dipping their toes in the water with POC’s for data analytics and its not easy to introduce control systems later on in the process – so you need to think of Industry 4.0 almost as if it is a closed loop. We break these stages down into 5 steps for successful adoption. Basic Computerisation, Connectivity & Environmental. Secure Integration of OT & IT layers and all departments: Engineering > Production > Manufacturing. Connected machines maybe with additional sensors for visibility, leading to a digital model of the factory to show what is happening at any given time, which will the allow upkeep of the digital twin model at all times. Gathering the RIGHT data transparently and in quantities sufficient for meaningful analysis – the primary requirement for predictive maintenance capability. Smart Simulation of different future scenarios and identification of the most likely ones, allowing for accurate decision making and implementation of appropriate and timely measures. Eventually this will be without human assistance in order to get the best results in the shortest possible time. A Case for IIoT Implementation: Energy Efficiency & Lean Manufacturing Something that is mentioned when implementing new technologies is that those must help companies to reach at least a 10x improvement compared to what can be achieved from current or substitute technologies (Peter Thiel, From Zero to One. 2014). We have found out over +20 years of experience that Food Manufacturers have been using the same technologies to reach efficiencies. In energy and process management, these old technologies are represented by namely on-premise software with basic or non-existent dashboards that don't communicate at all with other systems, hence putting engineers to work with endless Excel spreadsheets. When implementing new technologies... those must help companies to reach at least a 10x improvement compared to what can be achieved from current or substitute technologies. -Peter Thiel, From Zero to One. This is an opportunity to help the industry save many valuable engineer hours wasted in walking around the plant, reading meters, writing data down to a clipboard, digging out data from every utility, and leaving it alone to a spreadsheet that no one ends up looking at. Instead, these professionals can create value for the company by analysing dashboards and creating change strategies to optimise processes. We have in one hand a best-case scenario: A plant that has all of its potential data sources connected, such as SCADA, LIMS (Lab Information Systems), Various Meters, Utilities (Boilers, Air compressors...), Operator Logs, Supply Chain Systems, ERPs and ERMs, and pulls it continuously. Here data gets gathered, sorted and cleaned automatically to a central point (Collator: Usually Software) that produces consolidated and easy to understand CSR, Energy, and Production reports with actionable data where decision-makers can clearly see opportunities for improvement and possible problems coming on. But that's the aspirational case. On the other hand, we have reality. It usually looks like a company with a SCADA system sitting alone in the control room with nobody looking at its data, except for an operator that overviews only one or two system variables. Here, the LIMS is not connected to anything; there are meters, but some of them are wrong, or there ain't none in for the critical steam or electrical users, utilities just sit there doing their own thing with nobody looking at them, operator logs are rarely collected or are collected manually. All of this information is manipulated by various people within the organisation, and they produce very different reports that are not correlated with each other. At this point, there is an information overload that makes it tough to see problems and opportunities that can lead to effective changes. Seems familiar? Hundreds of screens, thousands of tags, endless spreadsheets... No wonder why psychologists are so popular today! Driving Peak Plant Performance And so there is Industry 4.0. The best way to achieve that best-case continuous improvement scenario is to prepare your industrial plants with the right IIoT technologies, policies and professional teams, which can be challenging but certainly achievable under the guidance of proper experts in the matter (Link: Benefits of IIoT Technologies and how Industry 4.0 Consulting can help to get your Manufacturing Company on the hyper-efficiency track). That means to become IIoT Ready. Once you've got that set, you can follow the next steps to being able to drive peak plant performance: #1. Dig out data from unreachable places in the OT Create an IIoT Central Data Collator, which simply put means interconnecting all your OT data points through an IT architecture agreed by both IT & OT teams (Link: IIoT Connectivity Stage). This will allow to interconnect stand-alone PLCs, Air Compressors, Boilers, Flow Meters, Energy Meters, SCADA systems, MES and others to start delivering key data to one single point where it will be available and readable (Link: Gatherer Stage). #2. Make Sense of New Data Once you've got all your OT hooked up and taking production information up to the Cloud, you got to make sense of it. Food & Beverage companies are getting more variable and complex as they grow and create new plants in different territories. And that will be incremental now that you've got data coming from plenty of sources such as your SCADA, ERP, LIM, Data Historians and CMMS. So what you need is to distil down all this complex data and processes into live targets or actionable information for heads of plants to use it. The right way of doing it is by collating the Design and Operating data, creating a detailed process model, developing a reduced-order model to pour data down, and getting correlations from the model. Finally, you can contrast real-time data with Live KPI/Targets that you design. #3. Drive Continuous Improvement from Optimised Reporting Having information and reports doesn't turn automatically into savings. It is important to display the data in an easy and quick way to get the right set of professionals to analyse it in the right time frame to capitalise on the opportunities and solve problems. We utilise a Kanban dashboard to receive notifications and alerts over things that usually demand operators and managers attention. E.g. An air compressor that exceeds its consumption and gets over the predicted models. This tool also allows managers and operators to quickly access related data, such as backup data from utilities, performance status, and imagery, to quickly spot the opportunities for optimising performance. #4. Facing resistance to change Managing stakeholders isn't easy. But with the right data tools to back decisions up, it will become easier and quicker to help them make decisions and execute changes. These tools help you to get into a granular detail of what's going on inside the plant's operation and will generate PFDs to help support a model of processes to understand material and energy flows. #5. Make sure that change and value generation is sustained Make sure that change and value generation is sustained Once you have achieved changes and optimisations, you need to make sure you sustain them, as they eventually will demonstrate exponential growth. Through the building and maintenance of working models, energy and process efficiencies reach their peak. To ensure you execute these change models constantly, you might need to set up alerts to notify your operators, which must be triggered when certain conditions in the plant are met, allowing you to keep on top of any deviations. Low Hanging Fruits: Savings that you can achieve from this methodology. Utilities are one of the main sources of unwatched energy consumption that can be tracked and optimised. Here some stats that demonstrate existing opportunities: 55% of Boilers and Cooling towers are not being monitored by Food Manufacturers. 50% of Steam Users are not metered. Between 20 to 40% of control loops are manual or poorly tuned. Other sources of cost optimisation and opportunity costs include: Manual data collection that tie up engineering and CI resources. Lack of detailed mass and energy balance. Static, High Level and/or Incomplete KPIs that represent missed optimisation opportunities. Summed up, and depending on the size of the plant, efficiencies can reach around $100 to $500K per year. Interested in getting the right tools to achieve peak plant performance? Visit the solution's website at: https://www.polestarinteractive.com/energy-management If your manufacturing enterprise is in need of help to achieve efficiencies from these Industry 4.0 technologies, please do not hesitate in contacting us for implementation services. Or contact us for an IIoT & Energy Efficiency consultancy! Expected Audience This webinar was designed for CEOs, CTOs, COOs, Production Managers, Heads of Engineering, Plant Directors, Facility Managers and Site Engineers from the Food Manufacturing Industry. Next Events If you couldn't make it to this session no worries, we will be holding another Industry 4.0 events during 2021. Just keep checking the following link: https://www.polestarinteractive.com/industry40-events-offers Past Events Want to know what we've been up to? Check our YouTube channel where you'll find Industry 4.0 related events that we've hosted: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=webinars #Industry40TechnologiesUK #FoodManufacturing #Industry40 #IndustrialOptimisation #LeanManufacturing #IIoT #EnergyEfficiency #PlantEfficiency #PlantOptimisation #SCADA #MES #LIMS #Utilities #UtilityManagement #IndustrialConnectivity #BigData #IndustrialData #meters #EnergyMeters #SteamMeters #ProductionKPI #SmartManufacturing #InternetOfThings #SmartFactories #Kanban #Kaizen #EnergyManagementControlSystems #emcs

For a limited time, we are making it simpler and more cost-effective for you to explore the possibilities of IoT. Subscribe to our newsletter by clicking the button below and get a promo code to redeem on our 2021 Cisco IoT Offers: Take advantage of these time-limited IoT promotions. They are designed to help you uncover the power of Industrial IoT! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CYBER VISION, DNA & CATALYST IE SWITCHING OFFERS: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 YEAR OF CYBER VISION & DNA Bundle Options: IE-3400-1YE-CV-BUN (Network Essentials) IE-3400-1YA-CV-BUN (Network Advantage) Want to find out more? Download the Brochure of this Cisco IoT Offer: Get the Promo Code Here to Redeem this Offer. CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT YOUR PROMO CODE: REDEEM THE "1-yr of Cybervision & DNA" OFFER ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BUY 4 FOR THE PRICE OF 3 SWITCHES Options: IE-3200-POE-E-BUN: Fixed DIN rail switch, 2x 1G fiber ports, 8x PoE/PoE+ ports (power budget 240W) IE-3300-POE-E-BUN: Modular DIN rail switch, 2x 1G fiber ports, Up to 24x PoE/PoE+ ports (power budget 360W) Want to find out more? Download the Brochure of this Cisco IoT Offer: Get the Promo Code Here to Redeem this Offer. CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT YOUR PROMO CODE: REDEEM THE "Buy 4 Pay 3 Switches" OFFER ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10G FOR THE PRICE OF 1G What's included? IE-3300-C95-X-BUN: 1 Catalyst® 9500, 8 Cisco Catalyst IE3300 Rugged Add-Ons with 18% Off: Power Supplies, SD-Cards, Expansion Modules, Cisco DNA Licences Want to find out more? Download the Brochure of this Cisco IoT Offer: Get the Promo Code Here to Redeem this Offer. CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT YOUR PROMO CODE: REDEEM THE "10G for the Price of 1G" OFFER ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 90%-OFF IN CYBER VISION Promo Options: 3-year license, Network Essentials (IE3400-DNA-CV-3YE) 3-year license, Network Advantage (IE3400-DNA-CV-3YA) 5-year license, Network Essentials (IE3400-DNA-CV-5YE) 5-year license, Network Advantage (IE3400-DNA-CV-5YA) Want to find out more? Download the Brochure for this Cisco IoT Offer: Get the Promo Code Here to Redeem this Offer. CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT YOUR PROMO CODE: REDEEM THE "90%-Off in Cyber Vision" OFFER ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To get your subscriber code just fill in the form available in the following link: IIoT Newsletter Subscription. Then come back to this page and click on your preferred option(s) to redeem the Offer(s).

Have a "Use-It-Or-Lose-It" Budget? Your team has worked hard to come in under budget, right? Then why not giving them a tool to make their day-to-day more efficient, whilst getting full control over your OT Environment? With Dispel's Secure Remote Access you can: Provide access for unlimited operators via platform agnostic apps. Standardise vendor access with recorded, single-use virtual desktops. Manage all users, devices, access control lists, and security settings. Get buy-in from your OT, IT, and Security teams and access these incredible packages: Remote Access Packages: £30k - Moving Target Defense Package For companies focused on security and compliance, as well as efficiency and control. £15k - Intro Package Enough to demonstrate to your colleagues that efficiency should matter. Remote Access is a plant optimisation tool with a critical cybersecurity need. Interested? Get started by registering in this link. #Industry40TechnologiesUK

Firewalls are systems designed to prevent unauthorised access from third parties (eg. hackers or malicious software -malware, that may try to cause harm) into private networks, which works by filtering information. A firewall basically blocks unwanted traffic and allows wanted traffic. Firewalls are especially important to organisations with several devices, machinery, and other systems connected to the internet. Managers do not want all those devices to be accessible to anyone that can disrupt processes, steal information and cause harm. Therefore, firewalls constitute basic systems that need to be considered in every Cyber security implementation project for any organization. We can compare the way firewalls used in computer networks work analogically to those of a physical building. A firewall in a building structure provides a barrier so that in the event of an actual fire on either side of a building, the firewall keeps it contained and from spreading over to the other side. A network firewall stops the harmful activity and contains it before it can spread into private networks. For this to happen, firewalls filter the incoming data and determine by a set of pre-established rules and algorithms if it is safe to let that access request enter a network. In basic firewall systems, these rules are also known as access control lists (ACLs), which are customizable and determined by network administrators. ACLs alone are used mainly in packet filtering firewalls, which are quick and convenient. However, this firewall type is superficial in nature and can be manipulated by hackers who can make packet headers look safe, thus deceiving the filter. Some rules this type of firewalls use include types of ports, domain names, communication protocols, programs, IP addresses and keywords. As a very simple example, in the diagram below we show some rules in the ACL of a stateless-type firewall, determined by Port types that allow or deny access. As seen, traffic incoming from Port 25 is not allowed to enter the network, but traffic from Port 80 has been granted. Source: Lanner Stateless firewalls are very old and obsolete. One of their flaws is that malware has evolved to be able to look for other entrances to private networks, which make this type of blocking systems ineffective. Nowadays, specific firewalls offer at least some basic level of stateful monitoring (context-aware filtering). Other sorts of firewalls and cyber security architectures are as shown below. These have diverse uses, which depend on your production processes and security policies. Four main types are: Proxy-based firewalls These act as a gateway between end-users who demand data and its source. Host devices connect to the proxy, and the proxy connects separately to the source. In reaction, source devices connect to the proxy, and the proxy connects separately to the host device. Before granting packets access, the proxy filters them to apply policies rules and mask the location of the recipient’s device, protecting the recipient’s network and device. A big downside of proxy-based firewalls is that the internal processes cause delays that can reduce communication performance. Stateful firewalls This type of firewall traces the information about connections and make it unnecessary for the firewall to examine every packet, reducing the delay significantly. These firewalls can forego inspecting inbound packets identified as responses to legitimate outbound connections already checked. Web application firewalls These sit between web applications servers and the internet, defending them from HTML attacks such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and others. They can be cloud-based or on-premise (hardware-based), or they can be implemented into applications themselves. Next-generation firewalls (NGFW) NGFWs can filter Packets by using more than the source and state of connections, and the destination addresses. They include rules for what users and individual apps can do. These also mix in data gathered from other sources to make better-informed decisions about traffic filtering. To learn more about Firewalls go to https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/resources This article will be further expanded with more information on Industrial Networks. Subscribe to our IIoT Newsletter and keep up to date! #IndustialIT #IndustrialNetworks #ITConsulting #NetworkIntegration #SystemIntegration #IIoT #IIoTUK #ITNetworks

The second of our Q4-2020 webinar series: The journey to IIoT enablement; assessing the organisation's readiness to deploy IT/OT solutions to maximise the benefits of both areas convergence. Wednesday, 9th of December, 2020. 12:00 to 14:00. Online Event. The schedule for the day was: Industrial IoT: How to create an IIoT Strategy in the Manufacturing industry from Polestar's perspective, with a focus on cybersecurity. Speaking: Julian Smith, Polestar. Industrial Automation: Speaking: Senior Automation and IIoT expert from a leading Hardware and SaaS vendor, TBC. Christmas Cookies Baking: Enjoy a break with a hot chocolate while cherishing the art of cookie baking for Christmas and discussing about common IIoT bottlenecks for the manufacturing sector and their possible solutions. There will be a competition and a prize for the best cookie pictures posted in social media! Guiding: Louise Sturman, Polestar. #Industry40TechnologiesUK

This was the first of our Q4-2020 webinar series: A vision on the future of FMCG companies from a global perspective, and how IIoT helps to address business goals. Thursday, 26th of November. 16:00 to 18:00. Online Event. The schedule for the day was: IIoT Introduction: Julian Smith. How to achieve IIoT in the FMCG industry from Polestar's perspective, with a focus on cybersecurity. Avoiding downtime, preventing cyber-attacks, and embracing automation. Cisco on IoT: Stephen Goodman. What Cisco brings with their comprehensive IoT and Cybersecurity solutions. FANUC Europe: Craig Taylor. Maintaining production in and avoiding downtime from plant failures. Workforce automation for FMCG companies. Whisky Tasting: Once Upon a Whisky. Enjoy a break while improving your whisky tasting skills and getting to know more about the whisky industry in the U.K. Here you can see the full video of our webinar: IIoT in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods Industry There are many challenges we've had to overcome when integrating and controlling industrial environments such as the ones FMCG use to manufacture, not talking only about technologies but also people and processes. In the industrial data space, the manufacturing vertical has shown the biggest increase in demand for new technologies, which turns it also into one of the most complex industries for IoT implementations, as the number of assets in a single factory can range from hundreds to thousands co-located in a very small physical area. Industrial IT also presents a huge range of technologies. Some of these promise to deliver visibility across your entire production system. Still, if your IT | OT teams know where to start implementing them, it's not always going to be a smooth journey. For managers, it becomes hard to realize the benefit of that new technology across operations, innovations and end-customer experience. Most manufacturers realize that they need to compete with the likes of Amazon who are moving through the supply chain from logistics into manufacturing themselves. On the other side, FMCG customers are becoming more sophisticated in their buying habits and have higher expectations from the products they consume. So manufacturers need to step up to the challenge and build up their competencies in industrial digital technologies, investing in factory upgrades, and building new factories to keep efficient and competitive. This is not a decision to ever be taken lightly, as there will be years before that return on investment is realized. Our approach is that companies should always remember that security plays a key role on guaranteeing connectivity, hence quality and efficiency; and that this is a process and not a product. It should be built in from the ground up. We have some good examples and great success stories in the FMCG industry. We have supported major global brands into turning Industry 4.0 leaders. Reckitt Benckiser (a world's leading FMCG producer, with Dettol as their most iconic brand) is one of them. Together we planned and implemented an important IoT project, part of a global program to standardize their manufacturing environments to gain more visibility into production performance and improve quality whilst reducing logistics risks. Massive amounts of data and insights from production were needed to achieve these objectives, but they also needed to improve security and resilience to deal with the increasing threats occurring everyday in internet connected environments. Therefore, we brought in a specialist team to deploy Internet of Things focused solutions and Cyber-security systems. We designed the network architecture considering several of Cisco's security products to maximize RB's return on investment. When it comes to putting the IT and OT worlds together, organizations usually, if not always, need assistance. Both areas typically have very different demands that has been placed upon them by managers. For instance, the OT area can have a target of 100M pounds in annual savings from costs, but the IT area might be looking for heavy investment do deply virtualization technologies. This was the case for RB. At the end of their process, and by the hand of Polestar, they managed to standardise 25 factories into 1 unified integrated supply chain for their global production system. This also enabled them to put down their software stack. Instead of having over 400 software applications, they got down to under 50 apps. The journey to achieve IIoT in manufacturing isn't plug and play just yet, and probably will be this way for a while. Organizations have got significant opportunities to get more productive and achieve less downtime through the use of insightful data coming from existing equipment, but typically their existing network integrations and setups doesn't allow the monitoring of assets' availability in the factory floor. This is due to internal OT and systems not being securely connected, they literally can't talk to each other to share critical production information. Another challenge is that quite often customers simply do not connect their assets externally, hoping that with no connectivity there will be no threats. Whereas nowadays, we know ho essential connectivity is to collect and transmit relevant data. When they do, is often done in a very vulnerable way, because security risks haven't been understood or the systems were designed to be secure only from a general architecture perspective. Cyber attacks and ransomware demands on production services are becoming extremely common. Several Fast Moving Consumer Goods manufacturers face these issues not only on the factory floor but also into the boardroom. Polestar have detected three primary challenges when implementing IIoT projects, which are Leadership & Governance, Upskilling, and Adoption. Leadership & Governance: Unless the business has a very clear operational technology strategy which has been clearly communicated to all the stakeholders, digital transformation projects may not be successful. We work with all key departments to make it happen and establish clear governance leadership and governance policies; we work with the automation. OT, IT, security and management teams, including directors, managers, engineers and operators to make the IIoT implementation project successful. Upskilling: We know developing new skills need to be led by existing teams is not an easy task. However, we believe that training makes the system easy to use and understand, while also reducing the perception of complexity. At the end, digitization doesn't occur without collaboration. We build the foundations for teams to work together in order to make operational technology work. We set up virtual teams consisting of departmental stakeholders, and recommend peers. Adoption: Lack of the right standards and too many superfluous standards across the business units, creates paralysis and prevents the adoption of Industrial Digital Technologies. And the great thing about standards - there are so many to choose from… One of the biggest barriers to adoption that we hear in talking with customers is concerns over Cyber Security although frameworks like IEC62443 and NIST directive now go a long way to providing guidance. Companies can take advantage of all 3 of these solutions we offer to the primary challenges to implement their Industry 4.0 initiatives successfully. Nevertheless, you need to do it in the right order to realize that fully automated future. It's not easy to introduce control systems further down the line, or later on in the process. So you need to think of Industry 4.0 almost as if it's a closed loop process. For that, our IIoT Strategy consultancy will help your FMCG company walk through the IIoT journey in a seamless fashion. Learn more about IIoT Strategy here. Cisco on IIoT (Coming soon...) #Industry40TechnologiesUK

Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) are software systems widely used in manufacturing enterprises to help businesses connect, monitor, and control data flows. They also allow manufacturers to connect through Industrial Networks complex manufacturing systems and control every production process. Source: Siemens Manufacturing Execution Systems interconnect numerous vendors, facilities, sites, and production information in real-time, at the time that they easily integrate enterprise business applications, controllers, and equipment. This results in absolute control, visibility, and manufacturing optimisation. The core functions and benefits of an MES are as follows: Standardise and enforce processes across all sites: An MES helps synchronise manufacturing activities across worldwide distributed fabrics, and connect them in real-time to the enterprise system for optimal performance. Eliminate non-value-add activities: An MES helps remove human error in manufacturing by delivering yield monitoring, real-time quality data checks, automatic execution of specifications and business rules, and as-manufactured lot, batch, device or unit traceability, resulting in better process and product quality, hence higher productivity. Gain real-time visibility and control across the supply chain: An MES provides the flexibility to model and change complex processes and enforces them immediately. It tracks product and order details on the plant floor, collects transactions for reporting to financial and planning systems, and electronically dispatches orders and manufacturing commands to shop floor personnel, and in some cases machines as well. Accelerate trace analysis, root cause identification and issue solution: An MES provide the real-time feedback needed to quickly diagnose and resolve issues for continuous product and process improvement and optimisation of manufacturing processes, avoiding bottlenecks before they become a problem. Lower cost of good quality: An MES reduces the downtime as it keeps your process running longer with a better understanding of your machine, also helps to reduce scrap and eliminates paperwork errors and redundant checks. MES are also seen as catalysts towards standardisation of operations and systems. It is worthwhile to notice that MES implementations are complex and applications need to involve specialised System & Network Integrators with extensive experience in your industry. Finally, when choosing a robust Manufacturing Execution Software you should select a model that supports a broad diversity of manufacturing industries and complex process workflows, with high volume automated data collection, make to order, rolled products, discrete assembly, and batch processes. Learn more about MES in this link. This article will be further expanded with more information on Industrial Networks. Subscribe to our IIoT Newsletter and keep up to date! #IndustialIT #IndustrialNetworks #ITConsulting #NetworkIntegration #SystemIntegration #IIoT #IIoTUK #ITNetworks

Our webinar session with experts in Industrial Automation, Secure-by-Design Network Architectures, IoT Edge Computing, CyberVision, TrustSec, and Industrial Cybersecurity concluded on Thursday afternoon with great learnings about IT and OT Convergence. Here a brief of our presentation. The Journey towards an IIoT Strategy As most of you probably know, the journey to being Industrial IoT ready isn’t yet plug and play. Organizations have a significant opportunity to get more productivity and less downtime through insightful data, from new or existing plant equipment. Typically though, existing setups don’t allow for the monitoring of availability for assets in the factory or supply chain. Companies need to be analyzing data to monitor efficiency and help predict things like component failure, which is increasingly essential to avoid costly interruptions to production runs. Often, Operational Technology (OT) production networks are not only closed to the outside world, but also to other internal OT & IT systems, so they can’t talk to each other when they need to collate the information. If they do work together, it’s often done in a very vulnerable way. Either the security risk hasn’t been understood, the design is not secure, or individual deployment projects are not structured around wider threats and are confident about a lack of external connectivity. Whereas in the real world connectivity is everywhere and needed to collect and transmit data. Those companies that have linked up systems insecurely can find themselves paying heavy prices. Cyber attacks and ransomware demands on production facilities are increasingly becoming more common, especially in times of digital acceleration such as what we are currently experiencing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, organizations have got to adapt to take this area of security more seriously. Three areas in which we help organisations to align towards an IIoT strategy are leadership, upskilling and adoption. Polestar helps industrial organisations and other enterprises to create a Strategic Commissioning Plan, in which we design the program to follow and set the vision towards a secure-by-design, connected, smart factory. This plan set the roadmap to the execution of an IIoT strategy. Additionally, we work on getting Operational Technology Policies set to boost the creation of IT+OT integrated virtual teams. In this process, we help organisations ask themselves which digital skills they need to thrive on their IIoT and operational strategy. Finally, Polestar helps define which are the right technologies to build the Digital Foundations the company needs and to create a Loss Prevention Report that help to assess risks and create preventive measures. Stages of an IIoT Strategy A comprehensive IIoT strategy must contain 3 main pillars: Acquisition, Transportation, and Analysis. But there are many levels of maturity on the way to that nirvana of connected factories, or Industry 4.0. We have classified these levels or stages as follows: Basic Stage: Computerisation & Connectivity. Secure Stage: Integration of OT & IT layers and all departments, namely engineering, production & manufacturing. Connected Stage: Adding sensors for visibility, leading to a digital model of the factory to show what is happening at any given time - not just in manufacturing cells) - allowing upkeep of the digital model at all time. Gatherer Stage: Transparency and big data analysis. A primary requirement for predictive maintenance capability. Smart Stage: Simulation of different future scenarios and identify most likely ones. Allowing accurate decision making and implementation of appropriate measures in good time. You can better understand these stages following this link. Also, you can undergo a quick assessment to define in which of these stages your company currently is. Industry 4.0 means different things to different people. To Polestar it is digital transformation for manufacturing companies, or more precisely: + Industrial IoT + Digital Twins + Cyber-Physical Systems Implementing these through the right framework will translate into adaptability leading to automated actions and automated decision making, eventually without human assistance in order to securely optimise processes in the shortest possible time. Many companies are just trying to dip a toe in the water with POC's or data analytics, which means leaping the steps of a grounded strategy, which is not good for control and security! The Evolution of IIoT Systems The majority of manufacturers are running factories with technology that is up to and sometimes over 30 years old. This makes of getting visibility on their assets a major problem, even if they have the knowledge within the business to make the right decisions about which devices can communicate with each other. Most of the times the approach that is taken is usually to ringfence assets by installing multiple firewalls at zone and cell level. Another challenge is the exposure of data points from control systems to enterprise systems in order to drive efficiencies. IT departments do not have the time, resources or knowledge to protect the actual systems. Additionally, managing collaboration tools, Office 365, standardisation around cloud-first projects for corporate applications, and cyber-security in the enterprise contribute to the problem for IT teams to stay current and up to date. The implementation of standards like IEC62443 for OT teams can be effective towards solving these pain points, especially when protecting Industrial Control Systems for Critical National Infrastructure. But for manufacturers, this can be too costly due to the management overhead as they have a very large number of disparate assets in some very large factories. Most of the time, perimeter protection is therefore installed using firewalls and the OT and Automation teams are left quite literally to their own devices. This does not solve the problem as MOST hacks come through enterprise services and not as IT teams would probably expect: through Industrial Control Systems. This is due to the high number of services that require to be open in an enterprise in order for information workers to do what they need to do. So what can be done to minimise risk without having to rebuild a Production network from scratch? Perhaps there is a different way of looking at that and dealing with the problem? Business needs are driving the adoption of cloud technologies much faster, giving the automation and OT teams too many projects. The cloud provides the opportunity to bring IT/OT and Automation teams together. Cloud platform security can arguably be said to be more secure than any number of perimeter and access firewalls - if implemented correctly. Transitioning to a hybrid cloud platform will provide transparency and security by design, as you only need to build it once. By routing industrial data through more securely controlled cloud systems, you are reducing the attack surface and the number of data points that are being exposed across the entire enterprise. However, using some of these new technologies does not come without potential high risk. By not having the means to monitor what is going on at the industrial level and by not having the means to implement the right policies and controls, any manufacturer can end up in a security breach situation, as there are multiple routes into the Production systems from the enterprise and from supply chain vendors. What we are seeing, particularly with the Covid 19 situation is a lot of customers running 24x7 production schedules with the emphasis firmly on keeping the ‘lights on’. This doesn’t give much headroom to implement new technologies such as secure remote access for support, maintenance and commissioning - quickly. Our approach is to move the remote access risk to the cloud where it can be carefully managed, and at the factories, build robust and resilient OT networks. Q&As Can an SMB (SME) achieve Edge Computing? Edge computing isn’t much more than data being processed at the edge of a network, to put it simply. This means that the data is processed before it crosses any wide area network (WAN), and therefore is NOT processed in a traditional data centre. For instance, IoT sensors (meaning sensors that measure machines or the productive environment) create data that is processed in edge computing. It is important to realise that both SMBs and large companies should aim to look for managed service providers (MSP) that can guide them through the set-up of an IoT solution at the edge. One major barrier for SMBs is skills availability. There are a wide variety of skills needed to delve into edge computing. The team in charge of an edge computing and/or an IIoT strategy needs very much of developer, operations, IT, and project management skills-sets combined with knowledge of the domain/vertical, which is hard to find all in just a few professionals that an SMB can afford. Nevertheless, SMBs need to know that they shouldn't expect to be themselves experts on IoT or IIoT. Through an expert MSP with IoT-IIoT as a competency, any SMB can succeed at an Edge computing optimisation and an IIoT Strategy. It's their job to focus on their own business and how IoT will propel their business to more success. MSPs can also support with external portions of your IoT fabric. For instance, Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) providers can both manage data influx and provide heightened security and larger pipes. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) vendors can deploy similar services when it is about networking resources and cloud servers. If an SMB manages to combine edge computing and network automation it will be able to scale up their operation without adding additional human resources. Edge computing can definitely improve IoT processes of SMBs in the transportation, utilities and manufacturing industries. It can help with processing time-sensitive data more quickly. In other cases, it can simply help businesses maintain certain government compliance regulations. Edge computing can also help save loads on bandwidth costs, which is of high relevance to SMBs. Distilling or pre-filtering data at the edge rather than uploading all of it to cloud storage repositories will reduce directly bandwidth costs. As the edge is becoming quite intelligent, there is a lot of pre-processing on that data to only extract what is meaningful and send the meaningful stuff up to the cloud. In the manufacturing vertical we work with two different types of customers: the machine operators and the machine manufacturers. While the machine operators have the flexibility to process the data wherever they want, including small industrial data centres right inside the factory, the machine manufacturers often do not have these options. Machine manufacturers often sell machines to other manufacturers as a single device that stand inside the factory floor. In this example, the manufacturers that purchase and use these machines do not have dedicated network connectivity to these since that would require additional server equipment to be installed near those machines. Therefore, the machine operators must integrate any edge compute device right into the machine. That way they can leverage edge compute to pre-process and evaluate the data from all sensors directly on the machine. This allows machine manufacturers to offer predictive maintenance services as well as remote monitoring & management services which ultimately increase the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). Read An introduction to Edge-computing and use case examples. Finally, is worth it to highlight that intelligent sensor networks will allow SMBs to maintain supply chain visibility. One of the main pain-points for Manufacturers is that they are looking for end-to-end visibility into their supply chain. SMBs must also go digital in this aspect by tracking and sharing data to become more competitive. Why hasn't predictive maintenance become a reality yet? One of the major challenges for companies to achieve predictive maintenance is the difficulty to get data, or the right data out of the machines they operate with. Indeed, most of the times the problem scales up to managers not knowing what are they even monitoring, and which algorithms are needed to optimise processes in the machine. The right MSP can help large, medium and small businesses to analyse deep data, perform calculations, and define the right strategy to tell managers what matters and what doesn’t, at the same time that they help to securely connect the factory. How common are Cyber-attacks in the Manufacturing Vertical? Extremely common, even the most powerful companies in the globe are vulnerable to debilitating cyber-threats. Many existing manufacturing systems were created when security was not a big issue. Also, the emphasis of operational technology for manufacturing has usually been on performance and safety, not in security. This has caused major security gaps to exist in production systems. How well secured your system is depends largely on how the OT networks are being managed. For instance, when connecting Apps it is common to find that vendors usually let a security gap into the networks. According to MAPI, at least 40% of manufacturing enterprises suffered from a cyber-attack during the last year. Out of these, 38% loss more than $1M USD in damages. Deloitte Research found that most of these threats were coming from internal employees through phishing (phishing facilitates the process by deceiving employees into revealing credentials and confidential information), direct abuse of IT systems, errors and omissions and use of mobile devices. However, types of cyber-attacks in manufacturing also include hackers obtaining access to systems and data. Malware is another kind of attack, increasingly widespread in manufacturing. Today, thanks to IIoT, more industrial systems are connected to the internet. Malware infiltrates not secure systems (often legacy systems) and spreads into the whole organization. Additionally, Malware can spend up to 300 days inside of a system before being spotted. Internal threats can be just as damaging. In manufacturing, there are countless incidents of insiders stealing a company’s confidential information for personal interests. Results from these attacks can range from financial (including the disruption of production) and reputational damage, particularly in cases where sensitive customer data is compromised, to the loss of innovative ideas hence market advantage. This is why IoT leaders such as Cisco rely heavily on MSPs to ensure that their customer's are protected. Is not only a matter of applying technology to solve the issues, is a matter of knowing how to apply it. #Industry40TechnologiesUK

A Software-defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) is a Secure-by-design Virtual Wide Area Network (WAN) architecture that allows enterprises to deploy any combination of data transactions to securely connect users to applications. In other words, a Software-defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) is abstracted from its hardware, creating a virtualised network layer. This IT Network type uses a centralized control function to securely direct traffic across the WAN. Business-critical applications are running over the Internet across multiple clouds, and traditional WANs that use conventional routers were not designed for the cloud. Contrarily, the SD-WAN model is designed to fully support applications hosted in on-premise data centres, SaaS services and clouds services. Source: Silver-Peak An SD-WAN can connect several branch locations or industrial manufacturing facilities to a central hub office, or cover multiple locations in a large facility/factory, and it has four main components: WAN virtualization. Edge connectivity abstraction. Elastic traffic management. Centralized management. Several SD-WAN solutions are basic and lack reliability, performance and scalability, hence, they don't ensure a secure and smart network experience. Contrarily, Industry-driven SD-WANs provide: Optimal application performance under any network condition through continuous monitoring and self-learning. Full end-to-end and live orchestration of all WAN edge functions. Automated daily application definition and IP address updates to adapt to changes in cloud applications. Comprehensive end-to-end security capabilities and micro-segmentation. Learn more about SD-WAN here. This article will be further expanded with more information on Industrial Networks. Subscribe to our IIoT Newsletter and keep up to date! #IndustialIT #IndustrialNetworks #ITConsulting #NetworkIntegration #SystemIntegration #IIoT #IIoTUK #ITNetworks #WAN #SD-WAN