Manufacturing Solutions

 
Manufacturing floors, harsh industrial environments, outdoor processing facilities, and industrial plants all require the latest in efficient, reliable IT systems to help move goods and services throughout the factory and distribution chain. By providing the infrastructure to support mission critical communications, supply chain management, inventory control, process monitoring, and product flow more manufacturers are realizing product and efficiency gains with Meru’s advanced single channel architecture.

Made for Manufacturing

• Toll-Quality voice over Wireless – Assured Application Delivery to all devices from the shop floor to the head office
• Seamless Mobility – Improving productivity no matter the harshness of the environment
• Secure Communications – Enhanced Security for process based applications, sensors, and control points
• All Wireless Factory – Extensible to the growing demand for Wireless applications and devices
• Lowest total Cost of Ownership – Easy to manage, support, and operate – saving money and resources

Meru focuses on two main types of facilities, each unique in their requirements.

Manufacturing
When infrastructure up-time is critical to factory output, Meru’s award-winning fourth generation Wireless LAN (WLAN) system provides the infrastructure needed to support the mission critical applications that keep the products flowing throughout the manufacturing process. Enhanced with the latest in process automation, robotics, video monitoring and more, today’s manufacturers continue to add applications to their legacy environment. The manufacturer of today has real-time information from hundreds of control points on the floor at their fingertips, providing up to the minute information on product quality, factory output, and yield management. Meru’s extensible architecture is designed to scale from the smallest shop floor to the largest multi-national integrated facility.

Meru’s industry leading architecture provides the necessary infrastructure for today’s demanding manufacturer. With a fully converged solution, Meru’s innovative wireless architecture is designed to provide assured application delivery with coverage from the shop floor to the loading dock. Meru’s advanced system is helping to increase productivity and operational efficiency with state-of-the-art communications for Voice, Data, Video monitors, WiFi and RFID tracking, process data, and service points as well as shop floor automation.

Industrial Environments
Petro-Chemical and Oil Refineries, Food Processing Plants, Chip Manufacturing, and other similar facilities represent some of the toughest environments for wireless connectivity. Electro-Magnetic Interference (EMI) has the ability to interfere with many WiFi enabled devices and the industrial sector, with ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 influences, Six Sigma programs, and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing aids are constantly looking for ways to improve their processes. Meru builds the core wireless infrastructure that enables today’s challenging industrial environments and enhances seamless wireless connectivity with their patented Air Traffic Control technology.

By bringing wireless to every part of the industrial environment, wirelessly connected phones, tablet PCs, fork lift mounted scanners, process portals, sensors, and scanning devices along with video surveillance help bring real-time decision support to industrial facility operators.

Benefits of Meru Wireless LAN Technology for Manufacturing

While others have created WLAN switch architectures, they focus primarily on ease of deployment and central management of AP configuration parameters. Solving this problem is both important and necessary, but it is not enough. The key challenge to being able to provide the type of reliable, high-quality wireless communication that will improve all aspects of manufacturing eliminating errors, monitoring processes, and managing contention amongst devices, interference and Quality of Service in a dense Wi-Fi environment with both data and voice clients. Meru has done just that with its wireless System.

Designed for Quality Wireless Communication
Meru’s patented Air Traffic Control™ technology delivers over-the-air QoS, predictable performance, and roaming with no connection loss, to reliably support landline quality wireless VoIP without interrupting mobile data applications. Up to 30 concurrent calls per access point are supported—a 500% increase over other WLAN products. The Meru WLAN system works with standard Wi-Fi clients and supports emerging 802.11 wireless phones.

Reliable Connectivity for Challenging Environments
With Meru's Wireless LAN System, wireless access to information from automation devices, process control, sensors, video monitors, and a myriad of other devices is made simply in the harshest of environments. Completely converged voice, data, and video—Meru’s architecture is uniquely designed for the most challenging shop floor, factory, processing plant, or industrial facility. Controlling devices in heavy EMI areas where WiFi is only a dream for most manufacturers, Meru’s scaleable architecture is designed to grow with your application and critical process demands.

E(z)RF Eliminates Channel Planning
A manufacturing floor has a variety of clients, unique building topologies, vast open facilities, and represent the most challenging environment for wireless LAN deployment. Other wireless LAN solutions require complex channel planning in an attempt to avoid co-channel interference, which can add significantly to installation time and cost. Meru eliminates the problems of co-channel interference and greatly simplifies this process with Virtual Cell technology allowing Meru access points to be simply placed in the best positions to ensure complete coverage and reliable communication.