When it comes to leaning out operations, manufacturers would be wise to factor in their own four walls. Every building, from the corporate headquarters to the factory, has lighting, security, HVAC, and network cables for communications and control of those areas. But typically, these systems are managed in silos that have separate communications buses, gateways, and proprietary interfaces.

Moving all of those building automation systems into a unified physical infrastructure that can control the lights, security cameras, and climate from one box makes it easier to manage all aspects of the entire building and saves money as well.

Panduit Corp., a maker of cabinets and accessories for cable and wiring, as well as the communications applications for managing a unified physical infrastructure (UPI), has teamed up with IBM, Rockwell, and Cisco to create a reference architecture that describes how an interconnected architecture works, from gateways and servers to middleware and Ethernet IP. But Panduit is taking the concept a step further by building a new world headquarters in a Chicago suburb that will serve as a blueprint for a building of the future based on UPI.

The new building, due to open in the spring, will comply with the leadership energy and environmental design (LEED) program, a green building certification system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). It will comply with all applicable environmental manufacturing and facilities regulations, including RoHS/ISO 14001 and ISO 9001/WEEE, and will use Panduit’s UPI to connect the building system with the data center, as well as a central service center that will enable views into worldwide industrial facilities.

Why is this considered lean? “We are cutting out waste,” says Jack Tison, Panduit’s chief technology officer. “Having the right data in the hands of the right people or the right hardware resources can result in effective process control that can minimize waste, lower energy consumption, and increase throughput. We enable lean by the integrated use of real-time data.”

In fact, once the headquarters is up and running, Panduit expects to trim building operations expenses by as much as 35%, or roughly $200,000 per year.

The UPI platform is set up in a zone architecture that allows connectivity among different bus networks, as well as each network to be segmented for easy troubleshooting or access to network devices. As a result, people become more connected as well. IT, building and manufacturing engineers, and even shop floor maintenance teams are all working with the same physical infrastructure rather than in silos.

“A unified physical infrastructure causes you to bring together disparate stakeholders to discuss the manufacturing process, which includes IT, control, and maintenance,” Tison says. “These folks have different views of the same world, and the result is anything but lean.” UPI changes that.