Ethernet server devicer wins high praise from Formosa Plastics: "We finally escaped from the nightmare of unreliable commercial ethernet equipment"
Formosa Plastics in Taiwan was established in 1954, and is now the biggest PVC powder manufacturer in the world.
With a yearly revenue on the order of 1.2 billion US$, it produces plastic raw material, plastic processed material, and fibre products.
The electrical engineering project department at Formosa is responsible for planning both software and hardware aspects of its production automation system.
This system includes a DCS (distributed control system) that crosses through all of its industrial parks, and is required to work in the most demanding of industrial environments.
After much consideration, Formosa Plastics chose Moxa EtherDevice Server to build up its industrial ethernet communications system.
The robust design and informative functions of this product helps keep their automation system running smoothly and continuously.
Formosa Plastics decided to use ethernet as its major communications interface for data analysis and real-time environment control.
Millions of tonnes of chemical substances are produced here every day, with most of the substances harmful, and some even explosive.
Controlling the environment of the plant is the most important issue for the production line.
Using ethernet is very good for development and future expansion, but when Formosa started adapting it by using commercial ethernet products, it was jumping into the middle of a big system-crash problem, and had to listen to the complaints of every production manager at the site.
Finally, it found Moxa EtherDevice Server, and when tried it, they immediately noticed a clear difference compared with commercial equipment - the system-crash problem never appeared! Its industrial, robust design works extremely well in the demanding environment of our applications.
Furthermore, with its special line-swap fast recovery function, Formosa can now change the layout of devices without shutting down the entire production line, and the real-time status reports help their maintenance personnel find out about communication problems in advance, thus preventing damage to their production process.
The excellent management functions of EtherDevice Server make it an important information provider, as opposed to passive cable-like ethernet equipment."
