Achieve Safe, Highly-Efficient Industrial Automation in Post-Pandemic Era
18-02-2022
INDUSTRY: AUTOMATION
CUSTOMER PROFILE
This customer is one of the most important companies in China's automobile industry. It provides industrial automation systems and comprehensive maintenance services for diverse industries — including automobile and aircraft manufacturing.
APPLICATION PRODUCTS
- Acronis cyber backup 12.5
- Windows 10 IoT LTSC 1809
- Windows Server 2016/2019
- IPC-610
CHALLENGE
- Assembly-line production Affects the Entire Company
Most automobile factories use industrial control equipment based on Windows 7 or 10 OS and Windows Server 2016 or 2019 for round-the-clock production. On production lines, hundreds of pieces of equipment are interconnected, making the failure of one impactful on the smooth operation on all the others. In addition, raw material shortages have been exacerbated by the pandemic. Companies suffer massive capital losses and damage to their reputation when market demand is not met or shutdowns occur.
- Industrial control and information security incidents occur with higher frequency and increase uncontrollable risks
The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation of companies. Indeed, the increased networking of devices is blurring the boundaries between IT (Information Technology) and OT (Operational Technology) thus increasing hacker attack opportunities. Information security management issues have shifted from the office to the production line. Accordingly, when protection management falters, viruses can be introduced to the factory, resulting in interrupted operations.
- High maintenance costs of up to US$ 500,000 per year
Factories leveraging traditional production methods need to halt line activity when conducting data backup. Likewise, several maintenance personnel are dispatched to back up data for individual industrial control devices. Multiple hard disks are needed for the simultaneous back up of different equipment. When data and resources are scattered all over a factory and not managed centrally, the corresponding maintenance costs can reach US$ 500,000 per year.
ADVANTECH SOLUTIONS
In an effort to meet customer requirements for secure data backup, Advantech provided basic hardware and the Windows OS, and recommended Acronis, a backup software solution. Doing so ensured the security of the customer's voluminous industrial control data and reduced costs.
WHY DID WE RECOMMEND ACRONIS?
- Backup anytime without downtime
Acronis' system-level backup backs up data from industrial control and server equipment without influencing production. This data includes those produced by the operating systems, system configuration, production application, application configuration, and production when the equipment is running normally. These capabilities enabled maintenance without waiting for equipment downtime. In sum, backups can be performed at any time and/or from any place with ease.
- Centralized management reduces repetitive operations and cuts the labor needed for maintenance by more than 50%
The centralized management function of Acronis Backup 12.5 enables users to log in to the management server from any computer in the local area network over the Internet. They can then customize backup plans for each device, and perform required operations on each backup file. It also simultaneously supports user-defined grouping and unified customized management for comparable pieces of equipment.
- Quickly backup and restore to different equipment
Acronis’ Universal Restore enables users to restore backup files for different pieces of hardware. Many production lines use more than one brand/model of equipment, and encounter difficulties when restoring data. Acronis’ Universal Restore feature, enables its users to identify and restore images for different equipment automatically — such as restoring an Intel® CPU device to an AMD CPU device. This can greatly reduce the maintenance time after a failure occurs, allowing equipment to resume production within a few minutes, and minimizing the company’s losses.
WHY CHOOSE ADVANTECH?
- Advantech provides real solutions — including software/hardware integration and information security
- WISE-PASS industrial IoT platform realizes business cloud migration
Cloud migration and subscription systems have gained prominence alongside the development of digitalization. Advantech’s WISE-PaaS industrial IoT platform connects devices and binds with Azure public cloud to realize business cloud migration.
Quote from Client
Most actors in this industry think that Advantech only provides hardware and low-level software solutions — such as operating systems. Following in-depth collaboration, we discovered Advantech’s upper-level application software — like those used for data backup and information security — met our information security requirements. Advantech's product managers and technical team have been very patient and professional, and have continued to help answer our questions and solve our technical problems. We have really enjoyed collaborating with Advantech, and look forward to future endeavors on upcoming projects.
-Project Manager