Panduit Corporation / item North America Case Study

PANDUIT Corporation (Tinley Park, IL), a world leader in communications and electrical wiring products, and item North America partnered in the construction of an Industrial Ethernet based factory of the future at the PANDUIT Executive Briefing Center (EBC) in Orland Park, IL.

This facility demonstrates the convergence of production, data acquisition, purchasing, quality, logistics, sales, building automation systems and the company network, on one common infrastructure; improving network efficiency, reducing operational costs and increasing manufacturing productivity.

Industrial Ethernet was developed to solve the problem that occurs when open and proprietary protocols attempt to communicate. The different industrial protocols do not interoperate back with either the Ethernet protocol in the front office or between each other.

The Industrial Ethernet solutions from PANDUIT enable standards based Ethernet protocol to solve this problem. Industrial Ethernet provides a common, industry standard protocol to: 1) Improve communication of Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) processes between various processing equipment utilized by manufacturers; 2) Offer a seamless integration of critical manufacturing data beween the plant floor and front office support systems.

Typical applications for Industrial Ethernet include monitoring of manufacturing operations and processes, controlling the manufacturing operation and processes locally and remotely, acquiring data for ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), production, purchasing, quality, logistics and sales and the transfer of design files or engineering parameters.

PANDUIT came to item with conceptual plans for how the factory of the future should look and work. item engineers worked closely with PANDUIT engineers to fine tune these plans and develop a conveyor system, workstations and work piece tooling fixtures all contained within a special tempered glass and structural aluminum enclosure.

Careful planning allowed item to provide exactly what Panduit needed yet stay within predetermined budget levels that were set for the EBC expansion.

PANDUIT has now opened the factory of the future at its EBC for customer visits and product training. They have also extended an invitation to item North America customers to visit their EBC. Contact our inside sales department toll free at 888-729-4500 or email at itemsales@itemamerica.com for additional details.

PANDUIT is a global leader in wiring and communication products, delivering end-to-end solutions in support of demanding electrical and network infrastructure requirements. The PANDUIT solution is built on a foundation of quality and durability to ensure maximum reliability and performance. Continually focused on market needs, research and development assists PANDUIT in providing innovative products that meet the application and environmental requirements of today and tomorrow. This provides leading-edge solutions allowing businesses to accomplish their strategic objectives.