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January 5, 2026 16 mins

We explore how connectivity and data acquisition turn control panels into smart, reliable parts of the plant. From switches and routers to analog I/O, cellular access, and trends, we show how to reduce downtime, boost OEE, and make better decisions faster.

• why the finish line is real-time awareness
• roles of industrial switches on local networks
• routers for segmentation, security, and northbound data
• cellular modems for remote alerts and support
• analog inputs for level, pressure, and trends
• analog outputs for smooth valves, VFDs, and stability
• early warnings, predictive cues, and OEE gains
• practical design for reliability, support, and growth
• how EECO helps select, architect, and modernize panels

If you don't have your EECO Online account set up yet, please get just connect with us. There'll be links in the show notes as well for you to be able to do that. All the links will be will be set up there, and all that can be found at ecooonline.com.

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Host: Chris Grainger

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Episode Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Welcome to Eco Ask Why, a podcast that dives into
industrial manufacturing topicsand spotlights the heroes that
keep America running.
I'm your host, Chris Granger,and on this podcast, we do not
cover the latest features andbenefits on products that come
to market.
Instead, we focused on adviceand insight from the top minds
of industry because people andideas will be how America

(00:24):
remains number one inmanufacturing in the world.
Welcome to EcoAsk Why.
I'm your host, Chris Granger.
I'm looking forward to spendingsome time with you today.
And we're going to continue ourlook into industrial control
panels.
We've had a had that focus overthe last couple episodes of Eco

(00:45):
Ask Why.
And today we're going to dive alittle bit deeper into
connectivity and dataacquisition.
Okay.
And because these controlpanels, they're evolving.
And if you've been aroundindustrial automation for long
enough, you've watched thegoalposts kind of move, right?
Control panels used to be judgedprimarily on whether they were

(01:06):
safe, if the the wiring wasclean, and if they were capable
of running the process that wasdefined.
And that's still the baseline,okay?
But it's not no longer thefinish line.
Modern manufacturing demandsreal-time awareness.
That's it.
We need to know what's running,what's drifting, what's getting
ready to fail, and what's theprocess doing right now in the

(01:28):
moment?
And then we need to be able tolook back.
What did the process do over thelast shift?
And those questions can't beanswered consistently without
two capabilities built into thecontrol system.
And that's connectivity, so howthe devices communicate with
each other, and dataacquisition, how the system
captures and interprets thosesignals.

(01:50):
So at ECO, we're all abouthelping customers design and
modernize control panels thatdon't just control, but they
connect, they inform, and theyenable to better decision
making.
See, that's what it's all about.
And these they belong together.
Connectivity and dataacquisition belong together
because without you know,connectivity without meaningful

(02:13):
data, that's just a network,right?
So and data without connectivityis just trapped inside the
panel.
But when the right data iscaptured and moved reliably, you
get outcomes that really theindustrial manufacturers care
about.
You can troubleshoot faster, youhave less downtime, you can have

(02:34):
early one uh warnings ofabnormal behaviors and
conditions, you can have betterprocess stability and quality,
you have clearer visibility formaintenance and operations, and
then you ultimately you'reworking towards a path of better
OEE improvement, right?
And that that ties in directlywith predictive predictive
maintenance.
And that's the differencebetween a panel that simply runs

(02:57):
a machine versus a panel thatbecomes part of the whole
smarter integrated plant, right?
So at the backbone, at the heartof all this, though, for the
industrial control panel is thenetwork.
And most facilities now expectthe industrial devices to
communicate, and they'recommunicating primarily over
Ethernet, other other protocols,but Ethernet is the primary one.

(03:20):
So we're talking about yourPLCs, your HMIs, your drives,
your smart motor protectors, allthe stuff we talked about,
remote I.O.
vision system, everything.
It's all connected.
And this happens through acouple couple means.
You have switches and routers,and they each have a specific
purpose.
And at Eco asks why we want tohelp you just get a baseline of

(03:40):
understanding of what those are.
So you can think of that switchas the traffic director inside
the plant.
Because that switch is device isthe device that connects
multiple Ethernet devicestogether on the same local
network.
So think uh inside the plant orinside a cell of the
manufacturing.
So if a PLC needs to talk to anHMI, a drive, and an IO rack,

(04:04):
they are plugged into theswitch.
And that's an easy way to thinkabout it.
Because a switch creates thatlocal communication, you know,
like a neighborhood and devicesin that neighborhood can share
that data quickly and reliably.
And switches manage who talks towhom so that we don't have that
collision of data, right?
That's a very important uh thingto consider.

(04:27):
And industrial switches aredesigned for environments where
office grade equipment justquite honestly just can't hold
up.
You because in industrialmanufacturing, think about it,
you got a lot of noise, you havevibration, you have temperature,
uh, you have continuous duty,these things are running 24-7.
And so many of these things areare important when you're
selecting the industrial switch.

(04:48):
You don't want to go to HomeDepot, or rather, uh office
depot rather than just pick oneup, right?
And if you if you do the rightstuff, like you can start
managing switching, you can evenhave traffic prioritization,
monitoring diagnostics, you canset up your VLANs with that, and
so you can segment thatsegmentation is so important as
well, and then you can startbuilding in some redundancy

(05:08):
protocols, right?
So, practical again, practicalexample is a PLC can request a
drive status, read a meter, andupdate an HMI screen every
second through a switch, right?
That's not nice to have stuffanymore.
That's a have to.
We have to have that, and that'swhy this mod these modern
systems and and panels can areso responsive, diagnosable, and

(05:32):
scalable.
And then you have the routers,okay?
And the routers is kind of likethe gateway between the
networks.
And a router is different, itconnects one network to another.
So if the switch is theneighborhood, the router is the
highway interchange.
In industrial control panels,routers are commonly very, very
commonly used to collectmachines or cells to the

(05:55):
plant-wide network.
And they can uh they can alsosecurely separate an OT from an
IT, right?
And this forget it, they therouter gives controlled access
for remote monitoring orsupport.
So routers can enforce rulesabout what traffic is allowed to
pass between the networks, andthat matters because it's not

(06:17):
just about connectivity, butit's also it's so much about
safe, reliable connectivity,right?
So if you have your PLC and anHMI community communicating on a
local machine network, therouter can provide a control
pathway to send whatever dataset you want to a SCADA system,
to a historian or higher levelmonitoring platform without

(06:39):
exposing the control networknecessarily.
So you can see how that works,that's just a big deal.
And then you can take this evenfurther past without routers and
switches.
Now you can go beyond the plantusing USB, you know, like
cellular modems for remotemonitoring.
So connectivity gets even morevaluable when it can be reached

(07:03):
outside the plant, especially ifwe have if you have remote sites
or critical processes oroperations where they need that
immediate response.
And you can do this through arouter and a cellular modem,
right?
And they give you that thatinternet connection that you're
looking for similar to how likeyour cell phone connects to a
network.
And then the router uses thatconnection to transmit selected

(07:26):
information outwards.
This this is really cooltechnology because then you have
uh alarm notifications, you canbuild these remote dashboards,
you can have remotetroubleshooting, and you can get
support for these assets, youknow, while you're not there.
So if a process trips at 2 a.m.,because they never trip at 2
p.m., right?
When everybody's there, but 2a.m.
it's going to mess up.

(07:46):
When that happens, minutesmatter.
And if you have this properlyconfigured cellular connection,
the right team can receive thealert, the right alerts
immediately, see the statusbefore the issue turns into
downtime or production loss.
Right.
This is a this is really souseful when the assets that
you're trying or that you'reworking on remote, or if you

(08:07):
have a lean staff, or if youhave critical alarms that you
need to know about quickly andyou need that visibility, this
is a great way.
And at ECO, we can help youthink through the practical
side, right?
Well, which data is it istransmitting, which what alarms
are important, and how can wekeep it simple and secure,
right?
And then once you move in allthat data, it comes down to the

(08:28):
point of data acquisitionbecause you got to turn those
signals into decisions, and sonetworking moves that
information, but the IO capturesit, right?
In industrial control panels,data acquisition often centers
around you know your differenttypes of inputs and outputs,
because the real world and israrely just on and off, it's

(08:51):
usually in a range.
So you have to think analog,right?
So you have these analog inputsand they're reading these
different varying signals.
And analog inputs typically uhare they come from instruments
that that out that put outputsignals, like a four to twenty
milliamp, you'll hear that.
That's a common one, or zero toten volts, right?
That's a common one.
So just if you hear those thosetypes of um nomenclature out

(09:15):
there, that's typically whatwe're talking about.
We're talking about an analoginput or output, right?
So if a digital input tells youthe tank is full, an analog
input will tell you what it's50% full or 78% full, right?
It's gonna tell you how it'schanging in a very specific
format, right?
And that tank level is just agreat uh kind of example for you
because that you have that leveltransmitter that's getting that

(09:38):
continuous signal on the heightof the volume of whatever's in
the tank.
The PLC is reading that value tocontrol how much is being
allowed into the tank oremptying out of the tank, and
then you can create alarms likehigh alarm, low alarm, to
critical threshold alarms aswell, and then you can start
trending that data, right, tospot abnormal behavior.
So maybe if your link, if yourtank uh um gets a leak, right,

(10:02):
or or valve gets stuck, right?
You can see that.
Now, from pressure, like if youhave think about a pressure
transmitter, and that sends avarying signal based on that
line pressure specific, the PLCcan use this uh this signal to
regulate pump, to protectequipment and maintain
stability, all the stuff's outthere, and that the pressure

(10:22):
trends can reveal, you know, ifyou have something that's
clogged up or if you have a pumpthat's failing.
See how you can see you can usethese analog signals to uh to
better understand that.
Then you have analog outputs tocontrol things smoothly, not
just switching stuff on and off.
So analog outputs uh could cansend a continuous control signal
to things like control valves,right?

(10:44):
Like position control orvariable frequency drives, VFDs.
We talked about that a lot inEcoSY in the past.
For like speed reference, that'sa common thing you can do with
your analog output or or pumpcontrol just to rate the flow of
the pump.
So just instead of just turninga pump on or off, an analog
output can help you dial it in,right?
Dial in that process.

(11:05):
And lots of times you can dothat and save some wear and
tear.
And when you're controlling,when you think about this and
you start combining analogmeasurement with connectivity,
man, then you get a controlsystem that can do more than it
can react than just reacting.
It can start stabilizing andalerting and improving.
And this is you know, when youstart thinking about from a

(11:26):
practical standpoint, you know,think about a tank that slowly
is rising beyond its normaltrend.
System's gonna flag it.
It's gonna flag that fieldbehavior, right?
Or that pressure profile startsto shift over time.
Maintenance is gonna be able tosee that and be able to go try
to diagnose the signs of okay,what's causing the restriction,
right?

(11:46):
Or and that's or like the cellmode transmitting that alarm
immediately, and then theresponse time goes down
dramatically.
Because this is what it's allabout data acquisition and be
able to continually have thatvisibility into the system so
that you can act sooner andsmarter.
And that's what we're trying todo.
This is what at the core ofelectrical equipment company,

(12:08):
this is what we try to do.
We're trying to help you buildpanels that communicate and
inform.
And there's plenty of people outthere who can sell networking
gear or IO components.
The bigger challenge isdesigning the system correctly
so that it's reliable,supportable, and aligned with
how you how your operationactually runs.

(12:29):
That's important.
So we work with a lot ofmanufacturers and OEMs and
industrial teams to help youselect the right switches and
routers for their environmentand for the traffic, to help you
build that clean networkarchitecture that supports
growth and diagnosis anddiagnostics, rather.
We we really are are big onhelping implement uh implement

(12:51):
remote connectivity solutionsand considering the the cellular
solutions out there as well, butthoughtfully considering those,
not just throwing out ateverything.
We want to be very thoughtfuland intentional about where we
where we go with that, and thentrying to specify and apply
analog I.O.
correct correctly to help youthink through a stable control

(13:12):
and usable data.
So this is all about a goaltowards modernization and
helping your plants grow.
So whether you're building newpanels or upgrading a legacy
system, the goal was the same.
You got to get connected to whatmatters, you got to capture what
matters, and you got to makethat information usable.
And that's what we're trying todo at Electro Equipment Company

(13:33):
each and every day.
That's what we do do, rather.
We help we help our end users dothis on a consistent basis.
So if you're evaluating uh amodernization initiative, or you
just want to kind of have abetter understanding of what
good looks like in the networkand data acquisition world,
particularly inside of a controlpanel, this is what we do.

(13:55):
We're here to help.
We would love to help you thinkthrough what those next steps
would look like.
So hopefully you enjoyed thisand maybe learned a little bit
more about industrial controlpanels and data connectivity and
monitorization and dataacquisition.
So, this is important stuff wefeel like at Electrical
Equipment Company.

(14:15):
Again, we have all our resourcescan be found at Eco Online.
If you don't have your your EcoOnline account set up yet,
please get just connect with us.
There'll be links in the shownotes as well for you to be able
to do that.
That's the easiest way to getconnected, to see parts, to see
availability, to see pricing,uh, to connect with our team
directly.
We also have labs set up allthroughout our geography.

(14:39):
So no matter where you'relocated, there's gonna be an eco
lab close to you.
And why does that matter?
Because if you want to come inand start working through some
test cases or just scenarios, wehave the perfect sandbox for you
to do that.
So again, connect with us.
All the links will be will beset up there, and all that can
be found at ecoonline.com.

(15:00):
So we're hopefully you'reenjoying these, you're learning
about industrial control panels,and uh along the way, you're
just building up your confidencein the industrial automation and
industrial manufacturing.
So, thank you guys so much forhanging out with us.
We're this is the first episodeof 2026.
We're excited to be back withyou for another year.
So looking forward to spendingsome time with you each and
every month.
Love to hear your feedback andyour insights.

(15:22):
If you have any questions, justreach out to us again.
All the connections and all theways to um get uh synced up with
us will be found directly in theshow notes here.
All right.
Well, have a great day.
Get after it, and just rememberto keep asking why.
Thank you for listening to ECOAsk Why.
This show is supported ad-freeby Electrical Equipment Company.

(15:45):
ECO is redefining theexpectations of an electrical
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would like to hear.
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(16:05):
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