Education, real-time politics Gaining an industrial Ethernet education allows users to see how it applies. They must consider the plant environment, amount of traffic, and installation before successfully integrating Ethernet to the plant floor. Also, there needs to be a wave of education throughout the supply chain. Suppliers must know what is involved with properly installing Ethernet on the plant floor before making their products available. One key reason that may prompt users to switch to Ethernet is the overall maintenance benefit it can provide, especially if they use material and production systems.
Ethernet can reduce of the number of networks used.
As a result, users can share maintenance tools rather than using separate tools for each network. Overall, users may be able to reduce the resources put into maintenance. In the past, the roles of control engineers and information specialists were isolated from one another. Many question whether those at the top of the enterprise will ever be able to close the loop with those at the plant-floor level. To successfully move Ethernet to the plant floor, manufacturers must collectively transcend the politics that inhibit achieving seamless transparency from plant floor to customer via a universal standard.