Case Study: Columbia Steel achieves reliable, enterprise-grade wireless across a 20-acre steel plant with Cisco Meraki

Steel company deploys enterprise-class network that overcomes building site issues

Columbia Steel faced an uphill networking challenge: Technology Specialist Patrick Garrett needed an enterprise-class wireless network across a 20-acre steel manufacturing facility that reflected signals, vibrated machinery, and emitted extreme EMI from 50 welders. After failed attempts with Tranzeo and Ubiquiti gear and integrators who said it was impossible, Garrett turned to Cisco Meraki and its mesh-capable access points and cloud-based Dashboard to try a different approach.

Cisco Meraki deployed seven Meraki access points in a mesh managed via the Meraki cloud Dashboard (two SSIDs for guests and employees), which exploited reflections off the steel to extend coverage and provided rugged hardware tolerant of metal dust and vibration. The result: reliable indoor/outdoor coverage across the plant, self-healing remote fixes that cut a day-long on-site recovery down to near-instant Dashboard resolution, the ability to carry the same traffic as the wired network, and a manageable platform that now enables plans for wireless barcode scanning using 802.11 and Bluetooth.

Columbia Steel

Patrick Garrett

Technology Specialist