It is possible to communicate by computer using communication technology such as electronic mail (e-mail). Communication between and among computers using any of a variety of protocols over the Internet, local area networks (“LANs”), and wide area networks (“WANs”) also is known. Such communication can be interrupted or severely compromised when an intermediary, such as a server computer, becomes unavailable.
Manufacturing machines and other types of industrial equipment can be interconnected and controlled to form an automated manufacturing system. It is known to hard-wire different types of equipment together to form such a system, using custom cabling. The use of such dedicated custom cabling makes it difficult, time consuming, and expensive to add additional machines or equipment to the system, or to replace machines/equipment with different or improved machines/equipment or with machines/equipment made by different manufacturers. Another solution that has been applied to this problem is the writing of custom computer code to allow the conversion of information or instructions residing on one manufacturer's equipment, such as a Programmable Logic Controller (“PLC”), to be communicated to another PLC made by a different manufacturer.