Manufacturing

A production floor has metal racking, moving plant, high ceilings and radio noise from the machinery itself. Access points placed on an office plan fail in that environment. VEI designs every industrial Wi-Fi network before anything is ordered:

• Ekahau survey first. Our engineers are Ekahau certified. The survey produces a heat map of predicted coverage and a bill of materials, so the customer sees where every access point goes and what it costs before committing.
• New build or upgrade. We design and budget Wi-Fi for new facilities and we upgrade existing sites, including migrations from an older estate to a centrally managed one.
• Cisco Meraki, HPE Aruba and Ubiquiti. We hold partnerships with all three, so the platform is chosen to fit the site rather than the site fitted to a platform.
• Wi-Fi 6 where it earns its place. For dense device counts, handheld scanners, AGVs and tablets on the line.

The full service is described on Managed Wi-Fi.

Steel cladding, insulated panels and deep floor plates block mobile signal. Staff lose calls, handheld devices drop off the network and contractors cannot be reached on site. VEI designs and installs GSM boosting systems that carry all Irish mobile carriers into the building:

1. An RF survey establishes where signal is lost and which networks are affected.
2. External donor antennas capture signal from every carrier and feed a central repeater.
3. Internal antennas distribute that signal evenly across the floor, including plant rooms and basements.

We are certified on two platforms. Multiboost systems cover small and medium premises. Zyxel systems cover medium and large premises and multi building campuses. In the last year we have delivered 25 GSM boosting sites. The full service is described on Mobile Connectivity.

Equipment suppliers increasingly need remote access to the machines they support. Giving them a route through the corporate data network is a security problem for IT and a change control problem for operations. VEI installs Ericsson Cradlepoint 4G and 5G routers directly on production machines. The machine gets its own internet connection, the supplier reaches it without touching the customer data LAN, and the plant network stays closed. The same routers provide connectivity in areas of a site that were never cabled, and act as failover for a site’s primary broadband.

Yes. We install and support across all 26 counties of Ireland, across the United Kingdom, and in customer operations in over 100 countries, with in country certified field engineers rather than travelling teams. Multi site manufacturers take three things from VEI:

• LAN and WAN across the estate. Switching, structured cabling and site to site connectivity, described on LAN Network Installation.
• Managed support under an SLA. Monitoring, fault resolution and change control with our own engineers, described on Managed Services and SLA Support.
• Certified people when a project peaks. Network engineers, project managers and field teams supplied on a day rate or on contract, described on Expert People Placements.

Ardagh Group, Pfizer, Lynas, Linden Foods, Breedon and Mannok are among the manufacturers VEI has delivered for, across glass and metal packaging, pharmaceutical production, food processing and building materials. The logos below are theirs.

• McGrath Group. Stella Doradus GSM boosting delivering all carrier mobile signal on every floor of a 250 unit development, with Ekahau surveyed Wi-Fi in all common areas. The same approach VEI uses on a production site.
• Large European Retailer. More than 10,000 access points delivered across difficult environments, with predictive and on site surveys before every install.

Does VEI survey the site before quoting a factory Wi-Fi network?
Yes. Every industrial Wi-Fi design starts with an Ekahau survey by a certified engineer. The output is a coverage heat map and a bill of materials, so the quote is based on the building rather than an estimate.

Which mobile networks does GSM boosting cover?
All Irish mobile carriers. The donor antennas capture every network available outside the building and the internal antennas distribute all of them, so staff and contractors on any provider get signal.

Can equipment suppliers access their machines remotely without being on our network?
Yes. VEI installs 4G and 5G routers on the production machines themselves. The supplier connects through the router’s own internet connection and never touches the plant data network.

Does VEI support the network after installation?
Yes. Managed Services and SLA Support covers monitoring, fault resolution and change control with VEI’s own certified engineers, for a single site or a multi plant estate.

Which platforms does VEI work with in manufacturing?
Cisco Meraki, HPE Aruba and Ubiquiti for Wi-Fi; Multiboost and Zyxel for GSM boosting; Ericsson Cradlepoint for 4G and 5G routing; Cisco, Arista and HPE Aruba for switching.

Talk to VEI Global about Wi-Fi, mobile signal and network infrastructure for your manufacturing site.