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.

A large plywood manufacturer in Uttarakhand, India, was experiencing costly downtime due to network errors. After identifying critical issues using a PROFIBUS diagnostics tool, the customer made key installation and design changes to eliminate the errors.

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.

Mostly brownfield operations, upstream oil, and gas production sites require materials, equipment, and delivery systems to work together to produce high rates of utilization. Roughneck Equipment, which provides chemical delivery equipment to oil and gas fracturing operations, uses PROFINET to make it easier to keep utilization rates high.

Everyone’s talking about predictive maintenance. But, when it comes to implementing it in practice, many users often fail because they don’t have access to the right data. Enter: PROFINET and OPC UA. This application story from Audi demonstrates a successful case of preventive maintenance.

Tunnel boring machines are enormous, highly automated, mobile "factories," which can perform all stages of tunnel construction in a single run. A challenge for these machines is the transmission of relevant data from the head to the controller located further back. PROFINET over wireless played a vital role in solving that challenge.

Improved surface finish and faster cycle times were high priorities in developing a new surfacing center with robot cell. Much of this success was made possible by strategically specifying pneumatic and electromechanical drives with PROFINET interfaces.

IIoT concepts are inspiring new business models. Manufacturers are asking equipment makers to help them improve machine reliability and production uptime. Ecoclean's innovative approach is breaking new grounds with remote monitoring and diagnostics services for PROFINET networks. Read this application story to find out what they achieved.