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RS expands industrial networking offering with HMS partnership

August 2022 News

RS Components has partnered with HMS Networks, a specialist in industrial information and communication technology, to significantly expand its industrial equipment networking solutions offering.

HMS’ products and solutions enable value creation from data, and support its customers in increasing productivity, efficiency and sustainability. As a technology pioneer, HMS has already connected over seven million devices in factory automation and connected more than 400 000 machines to cloud systems worldwide. Well-known brands from the HMS portfolio are Anybus, Ewon and Ixxat, which are now available from RS, further expanding its range in the field of factory automation and digitalisation/Industrial Internet of things (IIoT).

Following the concept ‘every device and every network’, gateways and solutions from the Anybus brand enable automation devices to communicate with each other, regardless of fieldbus or industrial Ethernet. There are more than 300 different versions of the Anybus Communicator and the X-gateway for connecting devices, machines and networks, across a broad range of applications. Wireless data transmission can be implemented with Anybus Wireless solutions so that machines and devices can be networked with each other via Bluetooth, WLAN or mobile communications.

With Ewon’s remote maintenance solutions, a secure connection to any PLC can easily be established. This enables both machine builders and machine users to access their machines and systems from anywhere in the world to configure and manage them, with access to status information. Thanks to remote access, operational efficiency can be increased significantly since, for example, service technicians do not have to travel to remote locations. The Ewon solutions are also suitable for existing machines and systems (brownfield/retrofit), since communication can be made with any control system, regardless of brand, without the need to change the programming of the PLC.

Under the Ixxat brand, HMS offers a broad portfolio of CAN/CAN FD products such as PC interfaces, repeaters, bridges, gateways and PLC extensions. There are various robust and reliable solutions available, especially for connecting a PC to CAN-based networks for control applications, diagnostics or configuration.

“The partnership with RS gives us the opportunity to open up new customer relationships with our solutions in the field of industrial information and communication technology,” said Thilo Döring, managing director at HMS Industrial Networks. “In return, RS is able to offer its customers technical innovations that enable the data networking of devices and machines in order to increase productivity and sustainability in the long term.”

The entire HMS Industrial Networks range is available from RS now, in South Africa and across the African continent.


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