Standards and Industry 4.0
Issue no 9 - February 2019
industry 4.0
Please could you say something about Profibus in the context of Industry 4.0? “The fieldbus wars from the 1990’s are over. Profibus has become the de-facto fieldbus standard for automated manufacturing. Performance was a key driver of mass adoption, achieved by creating a closed network.
But this came at the expense of flexibility. Industrial Ethernet was a step in the right direction with its openness. Now, it’s all about the data.”
What challenges are presented by Industry 4.0 and standards? “It’s always been about the data. If we think back to what made fieldbuses so revolutionary— the move from analog to digital—it was nothing short of a step-change. And while replacing 25 wires with just one wire was great, the real cost savings came from less tangible features. Increased data capacity, high-speed networks, diagnostics: these were the features that made it possible for us to sell 60 million Profibus nodes. They led to benefits like decreased downtime, increased transparency, shorter throughputs and overall greater efficiency.
“And while it may be popular to dismiss phrases like “enabling Industry 4.0,” which I used above, it’s important to understand that this is not just some flippant turn-of-phrase. Sure, it may have once seemed that such phrases were just different words for what we’ve been trying to do all along. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that something more is happening—and it appears that a convergence of information technology (IT) networks and operational technology (OT) networks is the key.
“The move from fieldbuses to Ethernet-based networks was another step-change. Serial fieldbuses achieved their determinism by virtue of the fact that they were a closed network. Likewise, a control network that leverages standard unmodified Ethernet to allow deterministic data exchange to coexist with other protocols—all on the same physical layer—is monumental. This is what made it possible for us to sell 25 million Profinet nodes.
“But what does it all really mean? From a classic ISA95 perspective, it means that the field level and the MES (manufacturing execution system) level are getting closer.
“The foundational reasons for employing industrial Ethernet to enable Industry 4.0 are well known— they create enterprise-wide transparency, ease data access, and provide standardized interfaces with broadly familiar mechanisms.
“In the traditional ISA95 model, industrial Ethernet only plays a role at the lowest level (OT) in the field. From there, it connects to the controls level, which then interfaces to an MES (IT) with the primary goal being to run the plant. With Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things entering the scene, however, the boundaries between these levels are blurring. As a result, the relationship between the field level and the MES level is set to expand.”
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