Infrastructure services
The network infrastructure your smart factory runs on.
SmartFactory is the software. This page is the estate underneath it — the cabling, the fibre between the units, the wireless that has to reach the far press, the rack in the comms room and the sensors on the machines. OneTek has been installing that estate in working factories for seventeen years, in buildings that are hard on equipment: heat, dust, oil, vibration, forklift traffic and a great deal of electrical noise.
You do not need any of this to buy SmartFactory, and you do not need SmartFactory to hire us for it. Do it yourself, or with the contractors you already use — and when you would rather one team did the lot, we are that team.
The readiness problem
Digitalisation projects rarely stall in the software.
They stall in the switch cupboard. The gap between a factory that could have a live production system and one that has it is usually not the product — it is a hundred metres of cable, three access points and somewhere to put a server. None of it is interesting. All of it is in the way.
The tablet drops out at the far press
Coverage was designed around the office and the goods-in desk. It is fine until the job that matters is at the other end of the building.
The meter needs a port that is not there
The nearest switch is full and the run is sixty metres away, so the meter waits on a network job nobody has scoped.
The data goes strange near the welder
An unshielded run pulled along the same tray as three-phase motor cable works right up until the shift you needed the numbers from.
The comms room is a shelf
A switch, a router and whatever the ambient temperature is above the compressor. It has run for six years, which is both the argument for leaving it alone and the reason it will fail.
Every one of these is routine work for people who have done it before. The sections below are what we install and hand over. If you want the reasoning first, or you are briefing your own contractor, read our guide to shop-floor network requirements.
How a job runs
Survey first, quote second, handover last.
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Site survey
An engineer walks the building with production running and looks at what is already there.
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Written scope and quote
The quote follows the survey, not the other way round, so it prices the job the building actually needs.
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A working window
A shutdown, a night shift or a weekend, agreed with you before we quote.
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Install and test
Every run is tested, and the results are recorded port by port.
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Handover
A handover pack that is yours to keep: inventory, drawings, test results and credentials in your vault.
Cabling
Cabling that survives a shop floor.
Containment, cable, testing and labelling between the comms room and the machines, installed around your production hours.
- Data cabling in steel or galvanised containment, with rated trunking wherever a run crosses a traffic route.
- Routes agreed with you on a drawing before any cable is pulled, kept clear of drives, welders and motor cable. The drawing stays with you.
- Shielded cable and shielded modules where the environment justifies it, earthed at one end so the screen does not turn into an aerial.
- Every run tested, with the per-port results in your handover pack.
- Both ends labelled to a port schedule that is yours to keep.
- Shop-floor VLANs configured and documented, including what is allowed to route between them.
- We work around production. Most of the pulling happens on a shutdown, a night shift or a weekend, and which one it is gets agreed before we quote, not after.
Fibre & connectivity
Between the buildings, and out to the internet.
- Fibre between units and buildings, in ducting or on a catenary across the yard, for the routes that are too long or too electrically noisy for copper.
- Single-mode for anything that leaves a building, multimode inside it, terminated into a patch panel at both ends rather than a flying lead coiled in a cabinet.
- Spare cores pulled and left terminated, so the next link is a patch lead and not another dig.
- Resilient internet where the site warrants it — a leased line, or a second circuit on a different carrier with a router that fails over without anybody noticing.
- The SmartFactory site gateway queues readings locally and drains them in order when the link returns, so an outage costs you nothing. A line worth trusting just means you rarely get to watch that work.
Wireless
Shop-floor Wi-Fi, surveyed and installed.
Unlimited users is only worth something if the tablet still has signal at the end of the shop.
- We survey before we quote, walking the floor with a meter while the racking is loaded and the machines are running.
- Access points designed and placed from that survey, not from a floor plan.
- Roaming tuned and then tested by walking a tablet between cells before we leave.
- Shop-floor devices on their own SSID and VLAN — scanners, tablets and andon screens kept apart from the office network and from guest traffic.
- Channels and transmit power set by design and recorded in the handover notes.
- A post-install survey and heat map, handed over for you to keep.
Servers & comms rooms
A rack you would be happy to show an auditor.
The cabinet, power and cooling that everything else plugs into, built and documented so anyone competent can work on it.
- A cabinet built out with patch panels and cable management, labelled front and back, with spare U left for growth.
- Cooling and filtration fitted, or the cabinet moved, where the room shares its air with plant.
- A UPS sized for the load and tested in front of you on the day.
- On-premises hosts where you want them. SmartFactory can run direct-connect on your own LAN, and that is a first-class deployment rather than a fallback.
- Virtualisation and backups that somebody has actually restored from in front of you. An untested backup is a story about a backup.
- A rack diagram and photographs in the handover pack.
Sensors & devices
The parts that make a machine visible.
We fit the meters, clamps, relays and printers that put a machine on the network, and record each one in the handover pack as it goes in. It is all standard hardware your electrician could fit. We often do it because it is quicker, not because you need us to.
- Split-core CTs clamp around the existing conductor. No rewiring and no downtime to install, which is why energy monitoring can go in during a normal working week.
- Modbus TCP smart meters on the network you already have, addressed and documented as they go in rather than afterwards.
- Cycle counting fitted to suit each machine: a volt-free contact, a clip-on clamp, or a DIN-rail node where a count must never be lost.
- Zebra label printers mounted where the operator actually stands, on a wired drop wherever we can get one.
- Smart relays provisioned with their own credentials, one set per device, so no device can read another device’s data or publish as one.
- Machine data over OPC UA is read-only by design. That is a property of the product, not a setting.
Security & access
Cameras, barriers and the doors.
- CCTV with analytics worth having — people and vehicle classification, line crossing, loitering — so the recording is searchable instead of forty hours of an empty yard.
- ANPR on the gate for deliveries and site access, and a plate log you can search back through when a collection is disputed.
- Paxton Net2 access control on doors and turnstiles. SmartFactory’s People module can read presence from Net2, so if you already have it, that part is a configuration rather than an install.
- Door contacts and alarm outputs brought back somewhere you can see them, instead of three systems with three apps and three sets of credentials nobody has.
- Cameras that watch people at work are a conversation with your team before they are an install. We will tell you where we think a camera is a bad idea.
Support
Optional, and we mean optional.
SmartFactory is built to be supportable by your team, not dependent on ours. The same goes for anything we install. This exists for the sites that would rather not staff it, and for nobody else.
- Monitoring and patching for switches, access points, firewalls and servers, with alerts going to somebody whose job it is to act on them.
- A UK support desk on 0161 475 6291, answered by the same engineers who do the installs.
- Everything we fit is documented and handed over whether or not you take support. There is nothing we hold back that would stop another provider picking it up.
- Take support for the network and not the software, or the software and not the network. They are priced separately and neither one drags the other in.
- If you already have an IT provider, we would rather work alongside them than replace them. They usually know things about your business that we do not.
Support is there if you would rather not run the network yourself. SmartFactory works the same either way.
Handover
You end up owning it, not renting it from us.
Every job ends with a handover pack that is yours: a device and port inventory, drawings, addresses and VLAN notes, the per-port test results, credentials in your vault, and runbooks for the handful of things that realistically break. Any competent provider can pick it up from there.
What handover looks likeThree ways this goes
You do not have to buy both.
The software on its own
Plenty of sites install SmartFactory with their own people and their own contractors. Meters clamp on non-invasively, the gateway needs one outbound connection on 443, and your electrician can fit the hardware.
What lands on your estate →The network on its own
Much of this work has nothing to do with an MES. A warehouse to cable, a fibre run to unit two, a comms room that stops being a shelf — that is a job we quote on its own terms, and nobody rings you about software afterwards.
Book a site survey →Or one company for the lot
One survey, one programme of work, one set of drawings, and one number to ring when something is not right. When the meter, the switch it plugs into and the software reading it are all ours to answer for, “it must be the network” stops being an answer anybody can give.
Talk to an engineer →Beyond the shop floor
The office needs looking after too?
We also run business phone systems, fibre internet and managed IT support for the rest of the company, not just the factory network.
Walk us round the floor.
A survey costs you an hour and a pair of ear defenders. An engineer walks the building, looks at what is already there, and tells you what the job really involves — the quote comes after that, not before it. Use the form, or ring 0161 475 6291 and say it is about the network.