At the Profibus Trade Organization's (PTO) annual general assembly on Aug. 2-4, the continuing upsurge in industrial Ethernet served as the cornerstone for much of the meeting's discussions. Harry Forbes, ARC Advisory Group's analyst, noted during his presentation that industrial Ethernet grew at a 35-45% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2002 to 2004.
At the Profibus Trade Organization’s (PTO) annual general assembly on Aug. 2-4, the continuing upsurge in industrial Ethernet served as the cornerstone for much of the meeting’s discussions. Harry Forbes, ARC Advisory Group’s analyst, noted during his presentation that industrial Ethernet grew at a 35-45% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2002 to 2004. ARC expects that growth rate to be sustained at around 50% from 2005 to 2009, Forbes said.
Development of guidelines for Profinet’s current fieldbus integration project is expected to be complete by October 2005. Edgar Kuester, Profibus International chairman, said that this project involves development of guidelines for mapping models and engineering associated with the integration of Profinet with Profibus PA, AS-i, HART, FOUNDATION fieldbus H1, CC-Link, and DeviceNet. Profinet integration guidelines for Profibus were completed in 2002 and for Interbus in May 2005.
Kuester added that the fieldbus integration project suits Profinet well, based on the technology’s conformance with IEC 61158 and positioning of Profinet as a universal Ethernet solution for industrial markets.
As with many areas of automation technology developments today, Profinet also is focusing on automation-to-enterprise integration. Kuester noted that with regard to this type of integration, Profinet is focused on automation-to-MES connectivity—not MES to ERP. He said that Profinet’s efforts in this area are focused on production, quality, maintenance, and inventory control.
The first area of focus in automation-to-MES linkage for Profinet will be maintenance, Kuester said. Guidelines for mapping Profinet’s application between these technologies are expected to be complete by the end of 2005.
During his presentation, Kuester noted that Profinet can now address real time, safety, and IT integration across applications in factory automation, motion control, and process automation. Referencing motion control specifically, Kuester said that Profinet has been shown to manage jitter to less than 1 microsecond and control more than 150 axes of motion.
