Irish Distillers moves up to gigabit industrial Ethernet control

The switches, from GarrettCom, are now used throughout its SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) network, linking all the production areas on a fibreoptic ring, using RS-ring technology. “We had used a fibreoptic star topology to network the various SCADA PCs in the different production area control centres, but although it was state-of-the-art when it went in, the network was becoming a limiting factor,” explains Michael Tracey, engineering manager at Midleton. “Even at 100Mbps, we were finding the connections too slow, while the star topology and the use of unmanaged switches meant that it was difficult to expand the system and diagnose faults,” he adds. Which was a problem. The Midleton site occupies 45 hectares and produces both grain and pot whiskeys – effectively combining a number of distilleries into one complex operation. The old fibreoptic SCADA network formed the heart of the control system, extending through all production areas, including grain intake, brewhouse, fermentation plant, stillhouse, boilerhouse, feeds recovery area, vathouse, and wastewater treatment plant. “We chose the GarrettCom switches for a number of reasons,” says Tracey. “Perhaps the most important was GarrettCom’s RS-Ring redundancy technology, which provides fast fault recovery in Ethernet LANs, even over the long distances that are typical in a large plant such as the Midleton distillery. “Also important were the facts that the switches are both managed products – with a range of security and redundancy features – and genuine industrial products. The distillery is an extremely challenging environment for control components, so we needed products that were industrially hardened. In this respect, the GarrettCom switches were ideal.”