TAP adapter for Ethernet, PROFINET, EtherCat networks

De & Co Hranice s.r.o. supplies production lines and robotic workstations for various industrial sectors. As the company gradually moved from smaller machines to large automated lines, the complexity of its communication networks increased as well. This created a need to diagnose PROFINET and at the same time connect securely and remotely to equipment already operating at customer sites. What technologies help their technicians do that?

Magna Powertrain lacked sufficient visibility and detail about PROFINET communication on production lines running 24/7. With ongoing digitalization and data collection from production, they no longer wanted to troubleshoot outages by “trial and error.” They wanted to quickly identify the root cause of issues or prevent them altogether, see the live topology, keep event logs, and monitor whether errors were accumulating anywhere.

Our engineers perform diagnostics of industrial networks in hundreds of manufacturing companies. They travel across the country to find the causes of failures. We have asked them what problems they have most frequently diagnosed in customers' PROFINET networks recently. What have they told us?

Do you know how the PROFINET industrial network works? Do you know how to find errors that can cause it to drop out? Do you regularly check the condition of the cabling and connectors? You can learn everything in a two-day training course full of practical examples.

Is it advisable to use cheap unmanageable switches for a few crowns or is it worth paying extra and buying manageable switches? Should I save money on buying switches for the production line or should I buy a quality PROFINET switch?