Simplifying Connectivity for Mass Customization

It’s All About Reliable Data Transmissions

To ensure smooth operations and on-time deliveries, data integrity and consistency are key. For the largest home appliance manufacturer in China, for example, connecting reliable production data in interconnected factories has been fruitful for their mass customization strategy. The manufacturer enhanced its production efficiency and flexibility by leveraging the power of a connected ecosystem. Network availability was ensured by combining industrial-grade hardware, providing redundancy protocols, with network management software. As a result, a reliable and secure connection to the manufacturing systems allows orders to be customized, logistics to be further automated, and customers to check the status of their orders. Furthermore, as real-time data is supplied from the shop floor, production managers can monitor the production line more effectively and tackle any issues well before full-blown problems arise.

The Stumbling Blocks to Connecting to Mass Customization

Manufacturers have come to learn that two challenges stand between them and mass customization connectivity: the large amount of time spent to establish multiple secure access and overcoming security silos for interconnected systems. In order to further reduce system downtime in a fully automated mass customization manufacturing process, it is necessary to be able to efficiently upgrade, troubleshoot, and maintain more connected machines from remote distances. Additionally, with more IT systems connected to individual control systems (ICS), manufacturers also need to protect all these newly interconnected machines and industrial subsystems from internal and external threats. For the purpose of this article, we will focus on establishing multiple secure access effortlessly.

VPNs and RDCs Are Not Always the Answer

Remote access allows users to administer and even control machines within a corporate network from distant field sites. Granting remote access to multiple devices offers many benefits for manufacturers, such as the ability to monitor multiple plants without the need for travel or on-site staffing. Upgrades and troubleshooting can also be performed from afar, which can reduce the cost and time needed for maintenance and keep system downtime at bay.
Although virtual private network (VPN) and remote desktop connection (RDC) technologies are commonly used methods for granting remote access to company machines and equipment from field sites, a number of problems are associated with VPN or RDC deployments for large-scale manufacturing applications.

• Deploying a large-scale VPN requires extensive IT knowledge and skills to establish encrypted layered tunneling protocol connections. In order to secure the private connections that allow remote users to access enterprise resources and applications, user authentication methods, including passwords and certificates, also need to be used and properly managed. All of these requirements can make VPNs especially time-consuming and costly to deploy at large scale.


• As RDC applications need to bypass certain corporate security policies, malicious actors can exploit seemingly legitimate remote desktop sessions to gain unauthorized access or control company resources. In large-scale networks, the risks are compounded by the number of remote desktops connections.

Making Large-scale Secure Remote Access Easy

To simplify large-scale remote access, solutions require ease of use, enhanced security, and flexibility to enable users at remote sites to securely access and control computers, machines, and other industrial equipment located within the factory environment.

As users want to avoid complex technical configurations, plug-and-play remote access brings ease of use to the solution. With a remote access connection that is centrally monitored and managed from a secure cloud server, virtual IP addresses make multiple remote access effortless by eliminating the need to manually reconfigure IP addresses for field devices.

For enhanced security, the ideal solution will provide VPN-based point-to-point encryption. Companies can grant on-demand remote access and control that conform to their existing IT security policies and enable remote connectivity without having to compromise network protection.

With regard to flexibility and scalability, a solution should allow users to remotely access and control equipment, as if they were locally connected, in different connection scenarios, including one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-may, and site-to-site.

Moxa’s Solutions

Moxa Remote Connect (MRC) provides an easy-to-use, secure, and flexible cloud-based solution for large-scale remote access. MRC is perfect for large-scale deployments because it only requires three components—the MRC gateway, a cloud server, and client software for both desktop and mobile devices—to enable users at remote field sites to securely access and control computers, machines, and other industrial equipment located within the factory environment.

Furthermore, if you want to learn more on how to overcome security silos for interconnected systems, download our application note.