Italtel Creates Industry 4.0 Competence Centre for MADE

Italtel has designed and created the network infrastructure and the security components of the demo-centre of MADE, the Competence Centre for Industry 4.0 established in the Bovisa campus of the Milan Polytechnic and divided into six technological areas ranging from automation to smart control of IoT contexts, industrial cybersecurity and intelligent data management.

Digitisation, innovation and competitiveness have long guided the paths of manufacturing companies, which have now been presented with new opportunities and concessions thanks to the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. A crucial element of the innovation process is to have a highly innovative network infrastructure, with an architectural redesign that clearly segments the IT/OT domains and that redesigns the security levels against possible attacks and disruptions to production lines and business systems.

For MADE's infrastructure, created as a common factor of both the Industry 4.0 demo areas and the operation of MADE itself, Italtel designed the wired/wireless access component and the one for connectivity to the outside world, using the best cybersecurity solutions for the protection of industrial systems.

"The digitisation of companies is one of the topics on which Italtel has long been focused and is now receiving a major boost from the NRRP (National Recovery and Resilience Plan). We offer solutions to the manufacturing sector that combine infrastructure and networking issues with security, IoT and cloud solutions. For MADE we have created an innovative and secure infrastructure, which identifies a single tool for configuration and management, and which uses automation logics for the management of activities, reducing the need for network re-design," comments Camillo Ascione, Head of Global Technology, Marketing & Communication at Italtel.

"This modern conception of network design, use and management is a wealth of knowledge, technological value and best practices, which MADE makes available to the companies that are about to embark on a process of digital transformation and evolution, supporting them in the transfer of know-how, in the understanding and adoption of new network and cybersecurity standards, in the management of complexity due to the use of new connection technologies and in their integration into the existing industrial systems," says Marco Taisch, Chairman of MADE - Competence Centre Industria 4.0.

The infrastructure consists of more than 300 LAN points, extensive WiFi coverage with the latest generation access points, support for WiFi guest access and the possibility to surf the Internet at high speed. A fundamental requirement of the solution is to ensure an adequate wired and wireless connectivity to each industrial context present, each with its own specific needs.

The flexibility of the infrastructure makes it possible to quickly satisfy new connection requests and to take on board new requirements in an evolutionary perspective.

As a partner of MADE, Italtel has collaborated in the creation of several use cases in the demo centre, ranging from industrial networking to analytics solutions, including IoT domain components.

MADE also uses Italtel as a reference partner for orientation and training activities, in particular areas such as the introduction to Industry 4.0, sustainability, traceability, logistics and data infrastructures.