COMPUTER NETWORKING:SOME PRACTICAL ASPECTS OF INTRODUCING AND USING COMPUTER NETWORKS IN INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING

SOME PRACTICAL ASPECTS OF INTRODUCING AND USING COMPUTER NETWORKS IN INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING

As mentioned above, applying up-to-date computer networks in the production and service industries requires two basic steps:

1. Integrating network technology (Internet connectivity and accessibility) in the related organi- zation or company

2. Integrating networking services and network-based applications (Internet technology) in the operations and activities of the organization or company.

The most important practical issues with regard to these steps are briefly investigated in the following subsections but some preliminary comments should be made.

First, there are, in principle, two distinct possibilities, based on the top-down and the bottom-up approach, respectively:

• In the case of fast top-down introduction of network technology, an advance analysis (feasibility study) should be performed, in order to avoid the potential risks associated with lack of careful preparation for taking a giant step ahead with networking in the company.

• In the case of applying the bottom-up approach, the speed of ‘‘getting networked’’ company- wide is much lower, but getting ahead step-by-step makes it possible to correct any mistakes and adapt to all the recognized internal circumstances so that the risks are minimized.

In any case, the top-down approach usually requires outside guidance from a professional com- pany that specializes in introducing and integrating network technology in the organization and activities of industrial companies. This is normally not required with the bottom-up approach, al- though preliminary analysis and outside advice may help a lot there, too.

Another issue is coverage and depth in introducing networked information technology. The basic questions are where to stop with the bottom-up approach and what goals to define with the top-down approach. Coverage here means organizational (what departments to involve) and geographic (which sites to connect to the corporate network) coverage, while depth relates to the level at which network technology is introduced (which tasks to involve and what level of completion to achieve by network integration).

A further issue is to determine whether buying an off-the-shelf solution, buying a semicustom solution and adapting it to the local circumstances, or starting in-house development of a full custom solution is preferable. For small enterprises, the first alternative will be optimum; for high-end cor- porations, in many cases, the third. Although today the second alternative is the most common way of integrating network technology in a company, each organization should be considered separately, requiring its own specific handling.

Internet Connectivity

The introduction of Internet technology in industrial engineering starts with a preliminary definition of the company’s business requirements and objectives. From these, the potential network applications can be derived. The planning and implementation phases can be started.

The first steps in the process of establishing Internet connectivity at an industrial company are to define the specifications and launch the necessary procedures:

• Consulting with experts about possibilities and goals

• Identifying what Internet applications will be introduced

• Defining human resource needs and deciding on staff issues related to networking

• Contracting an advisor / consultant to support activities related to company networking

• Estimating what bandwidth the selected applications will require

• Determining what equipment (hardware and software devices and tools) will be necessary

• Deciding about security issues and the extra equipment required

• Selecting the most appropriate Internet service provider (which may be the company itself)

• Deciding about the domain name(s) to be applied by the company

• Negotiating with the ISP about services to be bought (provided that the company is not its own ISP)

• Starting purchasing the necessary equipment

Naturally, the above steps do not follow each other in linear order. An iterative–interactive process is to be assumed, in which earlier decisions may sometimes be changed because of later recognition of specific problems, barriers, or difficulties.

The next steps should be devoted to preparations inside the company (or company sites). This means not just planning and building the in-house infrastructure (cabling, server room, etc.), but also deciding about the internal server structure (domain name server, mail server, web server, etc.). Another issue is starting the purchasing of the components (HW and SW) of the internal infrastructure and services that will be needed for covering the target applications. A further task is to prepare the tools and devices for the applications themselves.

Ideally, the full process may only take several weeks, but it may last several months (e.g., in the case of a complex infrastructure covering several sites, each bringing its own complex networking tasks into the picture).

Behind some of the above decisions and steps are several opportunities and choices (bandwidth of connectivity, level of security, server structure, equipment brands, etc.). Some also involve selecting among different technology variants. These alternatives require careful analysis before decisions are made.

It is not surprising that the Internet connection is to be upgraded later. This is normally not a problem at all and can be performed relatively simply, even if the upgrade also means a technological change.

LANs, Intranets, WANs, and Extranets

Establishing Internet connectivity is just the first step in the process. It makes communication with the outside world possible, but it doesn’t yet solve the task of establishing internal connections within the enterprise.

In the case of a small enterprise and a single company site, the only additional task in establishing connectivity is to implement interconnections between the PCs and workstations used by the company staff. This is done by building the LAN (local area network) of the organization so that the resources (servers as well as PCs and workstations) are connected to the in-house infrastructure, in most cases an ethernet network, of the company. The required speed of the internal network depends on the traffic estimates. New ethernet solutions allow even gigabit per second transmission.

Once the internal LAN is established, the next question is how the users within the LAN will communicate with their partners outside the corporate LAN. Here is where the company intranet enters the picture.

The intranet is a network utilizing the TCP / IP protocols that are the basis of the Internet but belonging exclusively to the company and accessible only to the company staff. This means that outside partners can access the machines within the intranet only if they have appropriate authori- zation to do so. The intranet is in most cases connected to the global Internet through a firewall, so that although the websites within the intranet look and behave just like other websites outside the intranet, the firewall in front of the Intranet prevents unauthorized access.

In companies with separate, distant sites, all these sites may have their own LANs, firewalls, and intranets. In most cases these are connected to each other through the public MAN (high-speed metropolitan area network of a town or city), or sometimes through the regional WAN (extra-high- speed wide area network of a large region), although private network connections can also be applied in case of specific security or traffic requirements.

However, intranets connected through public MANs or WANs may also be interconnected so that, in spite of the geographically scattered locations of the related company sites, they behave as a single

intranet. A common solution is to establish extranets so that the separate LANs are connected by a virtual private network over the public MAN or WAN and authorized access is controlled by a set of firewalls taking care of intranet-like traffic between the authorized users (company staff and au- thorized outside partners). Thus, extranets may also be considered as distributed Intranets accessible not only to company employees, but partially accessible to authorized users outside the organization or company.

LANs, intranets, and extranets provide a means for organizations or companies to utilize best the possibilities stemming from integrating the Internet in their operations and activities without losing security.

Although LANs, intranets and extranets are quite scalable, it is good to think ahead when planning the infrastructure and services of the company so that extension and upgrading do not occur more frequently than really necessary. The network address schema is impacted by the infrastructure, so changing network numbering can be costly.

World Wide Web Communication, Integration, and Collaboration

Once the LANs are in place, with their servers, PCs, and workstations, and the intranet / extranet infrastructure is working well, by taking care of secure interconnectivity towards the outside world, and by utilizing appropriate routing and firewall equipment, the details of the applications come into the picture. Here the best solutions can be built up by exploiting the possibilities that modern World Wide Web systems provide.

The Web is the global system of specialized Internet servers (computers delivering web pages to machines asking for them). The Web is also a tool integrating:

• Worldwide addressing (and thus accessibility)

• Hypertext technique (allowing navigation through a multitude of otherwise separate websites by following the links associated to web page content pieces)

• Multimedia capabilities (covering a wide spectrum of formats used by the Web contents, from structured text to graphics and from audio to still and real video)

Interacting with the Web content by initiating content-oriented actions, including also customizing them, is thus supported, too.

The Web is an ideal tool not only for worldwide information access, but also for communication, integration, and collaboration inside an enterprise and among enterprises (eXtensible Markup Lan- guage [XML]). The key is the combination of Web technology with the intranet / extranet environment. Practically, this means operating several web servers within the enterprise so that some of them serve only internal purposes and thus do not allow outside access, while others support communication outside the enterprise boundaries. While the latter normally differ from any other web servers only in their special property of being able to take over public content from the internally accessible web servers, the structure, linking, and content of the former are constructed so that they directly serve internal communication, integration, and collaboration.

This type of communication differs from general e-mail usage only in providing a common interface and a well-organized archive of what has been communicated through the system. This makes it possible to build the archive of the company continuously by automatically storing all relevant and recorded documents for easy, fast, and secure retrieval. The management of the orga- nization or company can thus be considerably improved.

More important is that such a (Web-based) store of all relevant documents also take care of integrating all the activities resulting in or stemming from those documents. If a document starts its life in the system, any access to it, modification of it, attachment to it—in general, any event related to it—is uniquely recorded by the system. Thus, a reliable and efficient way of integrating the activities within the company, as well as between the company and its partners, can be achieved. Typical examples are e-commerce and e-business.

Communication and integration within an enterprise by the use of computer networks also mean high-quality support for overall collaboration, independent of where, when, and how the collaborating staff members take part in the joint activities. The only prerequisite is that they all take into consid- eration the rules of how to access the company websites. (Nevertheless, efficiently functioning sys- tems are aware of these rules, too.) Different departments, from design to manufacturing, from sales to marketing, and from service provision to overall logistics, can collaborate in this way so that the company can maintain reliable and efficient operation.

However, as mentioned above, disorder in the operations of a company is amplified when World Wide Web communication, integration, and collaboration are introduced. Thus, in order to achieve a really reliable and efficient system of operations, careful introduction and well-regulated usage of the network-based tools are a must.

All this would be impossible without computer networking. And this is how industrial engineering can benefit fully from the computer network infrastructure and services within an industrial organi- zation or company.