Functional safety is not only in the interest of the affected persons, but it also makes sense from a business point of view. When the risk of accidents is correctly accounted for, systems equipped with modern safety technology have a much lower total cost of ownership than unprotected ones.
Once proven, many of the mechanisms employed by PROFINET IRT for 15+ years, are now being standardized by the IEEE e.g. in TSN. In hindsight, we are seeing just how truly 'ahead of its time' PROFINET technology is/was.
When laying grey cobblestones in road construction, probably only a few people realize that this is the serial product of a highly automated industrial process. But that is exactly how it is - and PROFIBUS, PROFINET and PROFIsafe are all involved, including wireless connections.
From workshop to webinar; the future is digital and connected. The current situation surrounding COVID-19 clearly shows the opportunities of digitization. Therefore the PNO's highly anticipated Industrie 4.0 Workshop will now be presented as a Webinar over two days in late May.
![Industrial Safety: PROFIsafe Profile Overview [Tech Tip]](https://ghpu1ux7a320petzye7f6y4u-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/e-stop_copy.jpg)
PROFIsafe is a safety communication technology for discrete manufacturing and process automation systems. It was developed to meet the Functional Safety requirements for PI communication technologies. Read this overview of functional safety and PROFIsafe.
When the Industry 4.0 Project was started at PI with lots of dedicated companies, its many different dimensions quickly became clear. Due to the sheer size of this spectrum, we also have to work closely together with other organizations. We all agreed that action was called for, not a “wait and see” attitude!
Even though PROFINET and OPC UA have some overlap in the automation and process industries, they complement each other very well in bringing the best horizontal and vertical integration possible. In the latter case, raw data from field devices turns into valuable information as expected by higher level decision-making systems.
In this article we will cover the details of PROFINET diagnostic concepts and use-cases covered by the PROFINET and OPC UA Companion Specification for mapping diagnostic information from a PROFINET device to OPC UA.
