"The SPS/IPC/Drives Show just closed its doors and I must say it was an exciting show. Of course, Industrie 4.0 and IIoT dominated the fair from the 30 thousand foot view, but the terms tend to be too vague and everyone has their own views about what these describe," reports Karsten Schneider, PI Chairman.
The PI Booth at the SPS/IPC/Drives Show hosted hundreds of show visitors seeking information on PROFINET, PROFIBUS, and IO-Link. Trade press editors flocked to the PI Press Conference on Wednesday morning for additional news.
At an early stage, PI along with users, such as NAMUR, started to intensively work out how PROFINET can be deployed in all areas of the process industry. Very quickly it became clear that PI can offer with PROFINET a complete solution package.
PI (PROFIBUS & PROFINET International) is making strong progress on Industrie 4.0. Main work is done in the teams of the PI working group "I4.0@PI" with sub-groups for individual topics. The requirements are being closely harmonized with users and senior experts from the various participating companies.
As the growth of PROFINET continues, new customer requirements for additional Asset Management functions have been incorporated. Added is the ability to record assets to make maintenance and operation easier despite increasing complexity of processes and related machines.
In the early days of Ethernet, collisions on the network prevented its use in deterministic industrial applications. If two stations tried to transmit at the same time, a collision would result. The collision was detected and each station “backed off” a random time and tried again. This approach was fine for web browsing and email but prevented determinism. The advent of switched Ethernet networks did away will collisions allowing Ethernet to be applied in industrial automation where determinism was a must.
In response to exponential market demand, the annual production capacity at the ArcelorMittal site in Fos-sur-Mer, France, is due to rise from 4.6 to 5.3 million tons of steel. One of the key projects designed to help meet this objective was the refurbishment of blast furnace number 1 based on PROFIBUS.
Did you know that IO-Link does away with the great variety of signals and interfaces on the sensor/actuator level once and for all? Naturally, sensors and actuators covering a wide range of complexity and characteristics were produced in the past, when there was no standard for an interface with communications capability. Today, IO-Link bundles up this variety and simplifies the last meter of the sensor-actuator level. The reason is that IO-Link needs nothing more than an M12 plug connection and a standard 3- or 5-wire sensor cable.
