Thöni Group has minimum administrative effort combined with maximum flexibility and security

MAXIMUM FLEXIBILITY AND SECURITY WITH THE SECOMEA SOLUTION

Thöni Group’s business philosophy is not only to deliver advanced machinery and solutions with a focus on customer needs, but also to provide fast and professional services involving external partners. The Secomea Solution helps in achieving that.

The challenge:

Need for centralized remote management 

Thöni identified a need for centralized remote management of all equipment, not only for Thöni’s own engineers and sub-suppliers who need to be able to calibrate and program the equipment but also for the end-users who need to monitor and control their own installations.

The solution:
Full control of individual user access

As a key component of both provisioning and service, the Secomea solution ticks the boxes. The machinery is equipped with SiteManager hardware gateways to allow various users access to the Siemens PLCs. Engineers use LinkManager on their PCs to program access using e.g. Step7 and TIA software, and end-users connect from their tablets and smartphones via LinkManager Mobile for operation and monitoring.

“Simply put, to us, the Secomea solution means minimum administrative effort combined with maximum flexibility and security„

– Manuel Kluibenschädl, IT Administration.

Access management is controlled via Thöni’s GateManager, hosted in a dedicated data center in the VMWare cluster. Key reasons for choosing the GateManager were its ability to log all access (who accessed which device when), and the ease with which an administrator can control exactly which user has access to what. This allows Thöni to provide differentiated user access to a variety of systems from other vendors, such as PLCs, gas analysis equipment, control computers etc.

In addition to the simplicity of administration, the commissioning of new installations is just as easy. With the SiteManager, you do not have to deal with IP addresses, special firewall configuration etc. Even though the SiteManager is an advanced network component, no networking knowledge is required to perform the installation. Everything is administered centrally in the GateManager.