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2019: The year of the industrial network protocol

The OPC Foundation, CC-Link Partner Association and ODVA have all made announcements about major moves planned for 2019, indicating serious movement toward greater device and system interoperability.

Announcements made at the Smart Production Solutions trade show indicate the industry moving towards greater device and system interoperability.
Announcements made at the Smart Production Solutions trade show indicate the industry moving towards greater device and system interoperability.

One of the best ways to gauge industrial trends is to follow where supplier and technology organization news converges. Applying this gauge to announcements made at the SPS/IPC/Drives show in Nuremberg this week, it seems clear that industrial networks and the protocols that run on them will be front and center of a lot of news coming your way in 2019. Here’s why.

On the first day of the SPS/IPC/Drives event, three industrial networking protocol press conferences were held—each highlighting major new developments.

The first of these conferences was held by the CC-Link Partner Association (CLPA) to announce the availability of CC-Link IE time-sensitive networking (TSN). There’s been plenty of news recently around TSN for its ability to bring determinism to standard Ethernet, thereby enabling the development of open, industrial Ethernet-based networks. And this was the main point of CLPA’s announcement.

According to CLPA, 52 partner companies are currently considering developing products compatible with CC-Link IE TSN—and 11 of those companies were present at the SPS/IPC/Drives announcement to express their commitment. Those 11 companies were: Analog Devices, Balluff, CKD, Festo, Hilscher, Hirschmann, HMS, Mitsubishi Electric, Molex, Renesas and Security Matters. Other CLPA members expressing support for CC-Link IE TSN include Advantech, Cisco, Cognex, IDEC, Oriental Motor and Schneider Electric.

John Browett, general manager of CLPA Europe, said that some of the first products supporting CC-Link IE TSN will be available in early 2019, with a few expected to be announced at Hannover Messe in April. Adding TSN to CC-Link IE’s gigabit bandwidth means that “we can add TCP/IP traffic to the industrial network and integrate control, motion and safety on that same network—a key requirement of Industry 4.0,” he said.

As critical as bandwidth is in the TSN environment, Browett noted that CC-Link IE TSN will work on both CC-Link IE’s 100 Mbit and GB versions. He added that it will also be backward compatible with earlier versions of CC-Link IE.

Initial interest in CC-Link IE TSN is expected to be high in the automotive and semiconductor industries where CC-Link IE is already prevalent. But CLPA also expects CC-Link IE TSN to see significant application in converting, consumer electronics and food and beverage, according to Browett.

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