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Control software, standards and protocols

TECHNOLOGY REPORT

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CONTENTS

What is time-sensitive networking? 3

The app for IIoT interface 7

Understand IIoT technology for a Smart Factory future 11

Follow the mapp for programming with function blocks 16

CONTROL DESIGN: SPECIAL REPORT

Industry 4.0 at work inside B&R’s smart factory in Eggelsberg, Austria. Efforts to align Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) are now rapidly gaining traction.

Time-sensitive networking (TSN) is the most recent leg of the journey that will make criti-cal data available where and, most importantly, when it’s needed. The automotive industry’s use of audio video bridging has evolved into time-sensitive networking for in-vehicle and out-of-vehicle com-munications.

But what exactly is TSN, and why does it matter?

“On the one hand, time-sensitive networking denotes a set of IEEE 802 standards, which extends the functionality of Ethernet networks to support a deterministic and high-availability communication on Layer 2,” explains Dipl. Ing. André Hennecke, researcher at DFKI, a research center in Kaiser-slautern, Germany. “In particular,

this includes an improved timing synchronization and a real-time scheduling method, enhancements of the stream reservation protocol, explicit path control and network policing procedures.”

On the other hand, the term “time-sensitive network” is also used to designate a series of acts from different organizations to enable a deterministic communi-cation via Ethernet, not only with a focus on Layer 2, but also with a view on Layer 3 (DetNet), appli-cations and certification processes, such as those from AVnu Alliance, says Hennecke.

“It’s possible to have a network that offers no value to a customer, even though it conveys 100% of the requested information, simply because of the transmission latency it introduces,” warns Doug Tay-lor, principal engineer, Concept Systems, a system integrator in Albany, Oregon. The aim of TSN is to eliminate that latency for criti-cal data by reserving a traffic lane for those packets.

At one level, time sensitive net-working it is a set of IEEE 802.1 and 802.3 standards, explains Paul Didier, solutions architect manager at Cisco. “The objective is to enhance Ethernet and core standard networking to better support time-sensitive applica-

tions, such as industrial automa-tion control,” he says.

“We’re trying to match up standard networking with a lot of the requirements coming out of industrial automation and control. The concept of these control transactions or messages is a little challenging. Control engineers think they’ve got a controller or motor, and there’s a wire between the two of them. Technically, they understand that moving to standard networks and being able to do things in those models makes things a lot easier. Queuing the stuff up is counter-intuitive. They’re looking for de-terministic network performance characteristics around latency, jitter and reliability that are easy to implement and use. It gives them an open and interconnected network that allows much more freely flowing information from those devices and to enhance and add to those devices over time, which drives the overall story of the IoT, where you can do off-line or close-to-the-machine. You need access to the data without having to drop extra lines in. It’s about convergence. There’s all of this IIoT, and it’s all about these things using the Internet. Aren’t there different requirements? Isn’t there a reason they haven’t used the Internet? Should we make some modifications?”



What is time-sensitive networking?TSN is purported to be the next

step toward realizing an Industrial

Internet of Things, but let’s define it

and understand what it is.

By Mike Bacidore, editor in chief

At the heart of TSN are mecha-nisms that provide time synchro-nization for networked devices and scheduled forwarding of defined traffic flows through the network, explains Markus Plankensteiner, vice president, sales industrial, North America, and global alliance manager, TTTech Computertech-nik. “Through time synchroniza-tion and scheduling, TSN delivers deterministic communication over standard Ethernet, thereby enabling the convergence of critical control traffic with data traffic over one infrastructure without the need for gateways or proprietary solu-tions,” he says.

“The TSN standards define mechanisms for the time-sensitive transmission of data over Ether-net networks; these in particular address the transmission of data at very low latency and high availability, allowing for time-determination communication and synchronization,” says Sari Germanos, open automation busi-ness development manager, B&R Industrial Automation.

Time-sensitive networking is a collection of projects aimed at improving Ethernet, and specifi-cally Internet technologies for time synchronization, explains Joey Stubbs, P.E., North American representative, EtherCAT Tech-nology Group. “These projects

are intended to improve routing, pre-emption, time synchronization, security and throughput of Ether-net traffic for A/V streaming and bridging,” he says. The IEEE 802.1 standard encompasses the work of the TSN Task Group, which used to be called the AVB Task Group for audio video bridging.

Fieldbuses are proprietary, well-designed for the applications they support, but getting data out of them is a bear, says Didier. “We can support that much better than the much-less-deterministic meth-ods that we currently have,” he explains. “They have control prob-lems they’re trying to solve. We’ve got an ecosystem we’re trying to build this into. This isn’t going to be a separate network configura-tion. It’s simply incorporated in the standard tools that you use. The idea is those programs under-stand the control loops and what information needs to come in and leave. The network will say it can handle it, sometimes with modi-

fications, and push it out into the network. That’s the architecture we’re putting together on top of the IEEE standards.”

Time sensitive networking, as a concept, is analogous to real-time networking, where real time is the amount of time that network data

is accurate and consistent enough for the control system to make reliable decisions, explains Phil Marshall, CEO of Hilscher North America. “In some applications, this requirement is measured in milliseconds, in others, in micro-seconds,” he says.

The standardization of time-sensitive features within IEEE 802.1/802.3 to be rolled out in a large number of consumer and industrial chipsets will mean that many more people will be able to gain access into the development of industrial applications, explains Dr. Michael Hoffmeister, port-folio manager, software, at Festo.



“In the generic sense, TSN is a set of capabilities being added to standard

Ethernet to support applications that need deterministic characteristics

for data transfer.”

“This is expected to stimulate a diversity of new use cases, ap-plications and software tools and will therefore trigger also new impulses on the shop-floor level,” he predicts. “Moreover, TSN al-lows for real-time communication in parallel to standard Ethernet-based office communication over the same network infrastructure, which increases flexibility in the network architecture.”

Time sensitive networking is the capability to do true real-time traf-fic with known worst-case end-to-end transmission times, says Mark Hermeling, director, product man-agement, VxWorks, Wind River. “Ethernet as we know it today is best effort, at best,” he cautions. “There is no way to calculate the time it will take for a packet to go from A to B. There is a lot of vari-ability in the transmission times that can be caused at multiple levels in the OSI model.”

There are fieldbus protocols, such as EtherCAT and Profinet, that have sprung up over the years to remedy this, continues Hermeling. “Many networks have one connec-tion for real-time traffic to real-time devices and one connection for general-purpose traffic such as connecting to IT networks,” he explains. “Time-sensitive networking promises to provide known transmission times for

real-time packets, while allowing general-purpose traffic to be inter-mixed on the same connection.”

Time-sensitive networks have very little latency, explains Sloan Zupan, senior product manager, Mitsubishi Electric Automation. “In machine con-trol, it’s critical that automation components communicate with one another using a deterministic network,” he says. “Protocols that use standard TCP/IP Ethernet introduce latency because it is a nondeterministic protocol.”

In the generic sense, TSN is a set of capabilities being added to standard Ethernet to support ap-plications that need deterministic characteristics for data transfer, explains Todd Walter, chief mar-keting manager, National Instru-ments and industrial segment chair of AVnu Alliance. “If you want to do a control loop, that is very dif-ficult today,” he says.

“You can engineer and constrain what traffic goes on the network. The level of performance isn’t as high as you could get. Time



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ing will play an increasingly large role in reducing development time and costs.”

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sensitive-networking actually will schedule a class of traffic through the network. An analogy is, if you have an express lane on a highway, cars in that lane can get higher priority. If you still have a bunch of cars at the same time, you can still have congestion. You can control and time when cars go in and when the lights change, so you can get deterministic transfer. That’s what’s being added.”

For once, the industry has a term that means exactly what it sounds like, says Dr. Richard Soley, executive director of the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC). “It’s connecting devices for which the connectivity is time-sensitive—that

is, communications must be received with minimum latency and/or maximum throughput,” he explains. “The common technical term is hard real-time, meaning that there is an absolute deadline, after which the system fails—the worst-case execution time can be characterized precisely; or there’s soft real-time, meaning the system may fail grace-fully after the deadline.”

Rockwell Automation follows the IEEE definition of time sensi-tive networking. “It’s a bundle of extensions primarily to the 802.1 spec, with some also impacting 802.3 capabilities such as schedul-ing,” says Paul Brooks, business development manager. “We very much see it as being a bundle of separate things.”

“In machine control, it’s critical that automation components

communicate with one another using a deterministic network.”

Have you heard enough about the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)? Have you had enough of the marketing to f ill you up for a year?

Get ready for some more. In fall of 2015, in Toronto, where I kind of live, there was an OPC-UA North American seminar tour. I wanted to attend, so I could see some of the people that have been involved with this technology from its roots, just like I have.

While it was not to be, they were kind enough to send me the seminar details to peruse. It’s funny how I received an email from C-Labs, a presenter at the seminar, just a few days before putting fingers to keyboard. So, what’s the buzz? Tell me what’s a-happening. I was bombarded with guidance and information that made my head spin.

I remember having visions of self-registering and self-aware devices 15 years ago. IEC 61499 was around, highly distributed control (HDC) came to the table, but nothing came of anything. Enter OPC Unified Architecture (OPC-UA) and IIoT. I will tell you the function and the idea of multi-device awareness isn’t new; this implementation is, and I believe it will be very successful.

OPC-UA is a multi-lingual com-munication framework to allow for communication to various devices. To have an OPC interface or avail-able server means any application that can “talk” OPC talks OPC and does not have to deal with the bottom-layer protocols, which we used to have to do in the past.IIoT, IoT, and Industry 4.0 are gaining a ton of traction in the press and from various surprising sources. Appliance manufacturers are tying into the buzz. Why is that important?

Most IoT data points normally are configured and monitored with an app. Typically, you have to download the app to your phone or tablet, and it runs on Android or IOS. Rarely do these apps run on Windows or BlackBerry. One of the reasons BlackBerry went to the PRIV phone and Android was the availability of all the apps that can run on Android.

The benefits of having access to these devices with an app is ease of use, instant availability and not needing to know much about the end device—the fridge for instance.OPC-UA wants to become that app for IIoT. The biggest and cool-est premise is the integration of an OPC server embedded in devices itself. Connectivity protocol such as Ethernet/IP and Modbus/TCP is already there, so why not a com-munication server, as well?

The heart of the IIoT Revolution is machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. This machine-to-machine connection is at the heart of IIoT, according to Tom Burke, president of OPC Founda-tion. And the draw of OPC is the vendor independence of getting the data out of the end device. With the advent of inexpensive cellular communication devices, it is now possible to have remote RTUs active on the network of choice. A coffee machine can become a node on a network. “Why?” is a question for another time, but it can.

So, enter the complexity of the net-work and all of the devices that are on it and the need and capability of interfacing with and gathering of data in a read/write scenario.How many apps would you need? Well, I think that what OPC-UA is going to do is simplify all of this for us in one fell swoop.



The app for IIoT interfaceOPC-UA could be the universal

translator that connects the ma-

chines in the Industrial Internet of

Things.

By Jeremy Pollard, CET

The reason I wanted to get to the seminar in the first place was to see what the dialog would be about the cloud and why it matters. The other reason of interest is the topic of embedded OPC-UA and why it matters. The answers come from the new generation of devices them-selves. Smarter devices are coming on-line that can be both consumers and producers of data. Consider a steam valve and some sensors such as pressure and temperature.

It has been noted over the years that remote I/O and network-based I/O would save money and make troubleshooting and monitoring much easier since the I/O would be close to the application.

Imagine if the sensors and the valve spoke to each other. And they would be talking OPC-UA. Valve position would be consumed by both the sensors, and the sensor data would be consumed by the valve. What they would do with it

is vendor-based, and user-config-ured, but the availability of connec-tivity and interface spells “wow.”

With an OPC-UA central com-munication core, almost all things are enabled. I have to say that has been available for some time, but in a very different suit. Devices would have to talk Profibus or ASI-bus in order for this to hap-pen, but the proliferation of bus types has created a segmented marketplace. OPC-UA will change that drastically.

“The aggregation of information on many layers adds additional metadata, and therefore it is of critical importance to use a single standard.” indicates Burke.

I read that to be: Everything everywhere needs to be OPC-UA aware. The database that is resident in the cloud can consume data from the steam valve just as easily as it can gather data streams from a SCADA logging program. Whether it would or could be re-ally easy remains to be seen but the inference of what Burke talks to is very inviting.

Kenton Petit of C-Labs suggests that 82% of businesses will be connected to the IoT, which means that devices of varying form factors will be accessing the Internet and corporate networks trading off information at will.

C-Labs is a cloud service provider that provides a method of aggre-gating data into the cloud and pushing it out to mobile and/or BYOD devices. Its main focus is IoT as such, but it’s not ignoring the IIoT. C-Labs plans on develop-ing an OPC-UA implementation to be used as a plug-in to its C-DEn-gine product scope. Notice though it’s not implementing an Ethernet/IP or Modbus/TCP protocol. This speaks volumes as to the market



SECURITY FOR OPC UA IN AUTOMATION STUDIO

Learn how the new user role system in the B&R Automation Studio software

development environment simplifies management of OPC UA access rights at

http://bit.ly/2jXjQyq.

“Embedded OPC is what is resident at the device level, regardless of the functionality

of the device. It could be a washing machine, thermostat, paper machine drive or a

field-mounted limit switch. The range of applications in the field is endless.”

http://bit.ly/2jXjQyq

breadth available to a company like C-Labs, and others I’m sure will follow this lead.

What OPC-UA doesn’t do is “the cloud,” which is why other prod-ucts and services will need to be employed to utilize the benefits of Microsoft’s Azure, for instance. Microsoft’s Rohit Bhargava, CTO, WW Manufacturing and Resourc-es, has publicly stated that his com-pany will fully support OPC-UA. C-Labs has created its own engine to benefit OPC users and devices.

SAP is using and supporting OPC for data transfer and data exchange. Oracle and HP have been part of the heavyweight com-mercial support that the OPC

Foundation has garnered. Indus-trial support is widespread and well-known, including Rockwell Automation, Siemens and PLCo-pen with their OPC communica-tion function blocks.

So the table is set for the OPC-UA led transformation of data flow in the industrial space. One more thing to examine: Embedded OPC.

Embedded OPC is what is resi-dent at the device level, regardless of the functionality of the device. It could be a washing machine, thermostat, paper machine drive or a field-mounted limit switch. The range of applications in the field is endless. Some may argue that HTML5 is all you need, or in

fact maybe Java, both of which are platform-independent. Honeywell’s Limitless wireless limit switch series uses commercial off-the-shelf wireless technology. However, you need proprietary software to access the device status.

This is where Embedded OPC changes the game. Any OPC cli-ent can have access to this limit switch if it had an OPC server embedded into it. The wireless part of the switch is the commer-cial off-the-shelf stuff, and in its marketing material the need for a separate interface is downplayed, in my opinion.

Typically interfacing with field-mounted devices used a browser-



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One of the communications standards enabling IIoT is OPC UA, which provides important security functionalities.

based interface. This is for manual browsing, if you will. OPC-UA will change the paradigm by al-lowing for automatic data transfer by having the server embedded into the device.

Using an off-the-shelf solution is not revolutionary, but from an application point of view using a standardized automation protocol is revolutionary. The abilities of the control systems can be greatly widened to include anything you want or need.

You could also consider Embed-ded OPC as software as a service (SaaS), as well. The ability to be a data producer from such a simple device simply breaks all the rules. One of the benefits of OPC is the ability to browse for servers on the connected network. While OPC devices may not be self-registering right now, they still provide a way to be polled and be recognized.

This in turn leads to the discovery of what information can be gleaned from the object model in the device itself. The usage of this data may not be autonomous, as human interaction may be needed to access the SaaS part of the metadata. But I can envision an HMI/SCADA system polling the network and displaying available status without operator involvement.

Another required feature is the ability to subscribe to information from a device. It’s a kind of “let me know when this happens.” This really minimizes unwanted traffic from the network.

OPC-UA provides nine differ-ent service levels, which we really don’t have to concern ourselves with as users of the technol-ogy. To have this availability in a single networked device will change the plant floor and the top floor in a big way—informa-tion everywhere, which was first envisioned many years ago with the advent of Ethernet.

Now it is coming to an automa-tion project near you. You will be exposed to many new technologies and services. Almost 50% of the OPC Foundation membership is in Europe, which suggests that the evocation of OPC-UA may truly be new to us in North America.

We will rely on the OPC Founda-tion and its members to guide our industry through the new data jungle. Guide us well.



“This is where Embedded OPCchanges the game. Any OPC client

can have access to this limitswitch if it had an OPC server

embedded into it.”

SUPPLIERS COMMIT TO TSN AND OPC UA COMMERCIALIZATION

ABB, Bosch Rexroth, B&R, CISCO, General Electric, KUKA, National Instru-

ments (NI), Parker Hannifin, Schneider Electric, SEW-EURODRIVE and TTTech

are jointly promoting OPC UA over Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) as the

unified communication solution between industrial controllers and to the

cloud. Read more here or at http://bit.ly/2iyVKor.

http://www.br-automation.com/en-us/company/press-room/leading-automation-and-information-technology-suppliers-drive-opc-ua-tsn-for-unified-industrial-internet-of-things-iiot-communication-to-the-controller-level/?utm_campaign=CLIENT%20B%26R%20170217%20Auto

http://bit.ly/2iyVKor

Developing and using technol-ogy for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is filled with com-plexities. The Smart Factory Task Group (SFTG) within the Indus-trial Internet Consortium (IIC) is helping end users and machine builders to navigate those complex-ities and become participants in the Industrial Internet revolution.

“Much of what you hear about the Internet of Things (IoT), such as Fitbit, Nest or a connected scale or refrigerator, is from the consumer side,” says Calvin Smith, business lead of IoT strategy at Dell EMC. “However, one thing analysts in the IoT space seem to agree upon is that roughly 70% of the revenue in the IoT today, and likely in the

future, is on the enterprise side. The largest vertical in that is manu-facturing.”

Smith is aware of the potential im-pact the IIoT can have in a number of markets and verticals. “There is significant revenue potential, and there is a lot of cool stuff that has already been done in the smart fac-tory space.”

The numbers vary, but, depend-ing on who you talk to, there are somewhere between 30 and 50 standard bodies and consortia that focus on IoT right now, says Smith. “For some organizations, it is difficult to make a decision on which to join or where to be most prevalent,” he says. “The Industrial Internet Consortium is a global public-private organization of more than 270 members, formed to accelerate the development, adoption and widespread use of

interconnected machines and devices, intelligent analytics and people at work. Although they are not standards-focused, which is an important piece of the IoT in gen-eral, they are more about getting people together, forming consortia and making some collective deci-sions and putting together refer-ence architectures and testbeds.”

Essentially, the IIC wants to test out and prove things in the IoT and make them real today as opposed to getting together and talking about things that might become real over an extended period of time, continues Smith. “The IIC is much more about execution and cross-knitted solu-tions by different member orga-nizations,” he says. “This includes large enterprises, subject matter expert medium-size businesses, small businesses and startups, as well,” he says.



Understand IIoT technology for a Smart Factory futureThe Smart Factory Task Group, with-

in the Industrial Internet Consortium,

is a complex group that is pulling

together several testbeds for the IIoT

in manufacturing automation.

By Dave Perkon, technical editor

SMART FACTORY TASK GROUP

Figure 1: The Smart Factory Task Group (SFTG) works with many IIC testbeds to demonstrate and educate end users and machine builders in the use of IIoT technol-ogy in manufacturing automation.

GROUPS AND TASKS

“The IIC structure includes several working groups managed by full-time staff,” explains Erik Walenza, CEO, IoT One, Shang-hai, China. “There are working groups covering areas such as mar-keting, security and technology. Under each working group there are task groups that do the core work and are run by the members. The Smart Factory Task Group is under the Marketing Working Group, which means our focus is less on creating new technology and more on aggregating informa-tion and putting it into a format

that makes sense to business deci-sion makers (Figure 1).”

Testbeds are the heart of the IIC and are driven by hardware compa-nies, software companies and inte-grators who create and test tech-nology solutions for the IIoT, says Walenza. “The SFTG is tasked to look at this IIoT technology and present how a machine builder can integrate it into its product offering for the factory floor,” he says. “We are looking at ways to upgrade an end user’s five-year-old equipment to work with the IIoT without completely replacing the control

system to get there. We are edu-cating end users on how to work within the legacy environment to adopt new technologies and enable IIoT-connected solutions.”

SMART FACTORY TASK GROUP

ADVANCING THE IOT

“Smart Factory is an important group for manufacturing automa-tion, and the timing is right,” says John Kowal, director, business development, B&R Industrial Automation. “We have the chance now to create standards and best practices before proprietary or qua-sistandards are adopted.”



IIOT INFORMATION TRANSFER

Figure 2: OPC-UA is just one of many Industrial Internet technologies being developed, used and tested in a variety of IIC working group testbeds.

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Kowal wants to make sure standards meeting the specific requirements of manufacturing automation are in place before everything in the IIoT gets de-veloped, so it doesn’t end up like OEE, for example. “With OEE, everyone does it their own way,” he says. “The Smart Factory and the testbed working groups are working to make the new indus-trial Internet technologies, ap-plications, products, services and processes interoperable, relevant to the manufacturing commu-nity and robust. This is a chance, especially with technologies, such as time-sensitive networking (TSN) and OPC-UA, to develop some standards-based solutions that are suitable for manufacturing automation-specific requirements such as determinism and real-time response in the IIoT (Figure 2).”

It’s amazing to the IT people in the IIC that manufacturing industries’ operational technol-ogy (OT) is based on propri-etary standards that aren’t fully interoperable, continues Kowal. “It’s not like the IT world where they can go in and plug stuff together. If we didn’t have the Smart Factory Task Group, the IIC as a whole may not have known to address manufactur-ing standards. B&R is addressing these issues by basing its products on mainstream computing tech-

nology, just like IT. The overrid-ing need for interoperability to achieve the IIoT is convincing the big players to adopt because they will follow the money, which is the analytics business.”

FLATTENING THE

NETWORK FOR IIOT

“As the IIoT standardizes, I don’t think the measure of success will be how many industrial networks

have been installed, but how many corporate networks were flattened down to one level so the ERP sys-tem can talk directly to the machine control,” says B&R’s Kowal. “That is actually what B&R Industrial Au-tomation is doing in our own smart factory in Eggelsberg, Austria, to achieve batch-of-one manufactur-ing. And we’ve been doing it for nearly a decade. Security in the IIoT is always important. Corporate IT



IIOT IN YOUR HAND

Figure 3: The cell phone will play a big part in displaying the appropriate amount of information in IIoT.

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departments may say, ‘No, don’t do that,’ but, if you don’t tackle the issue of secure access, I don’t think you are going to have IIoT.”

In B&R’s smart factory, the ERP system talks directly to the controllers, continues Kowal. “We don’t have an MES or a ware-house management system,” he says. “We use the ERP system, connected through OPC-UA and XML. It’s telling the automated storage retrieval system (ASRS) which parts to pull, and then it watches which parts are used most often and moves them closer to the front shelves to reduce travel distance required.”

This flat hierarchy is the brass ring, says Kowal. “If you have to go through several gateways and several different network types, you are not quite going to get where you want to go,” he says. “The IIC actually has an IT/OT task group, and they have announced this is not about technology. This is about culture, and IT and OT have to start working together.”

Again, security is very important. “The more you hear about poten-tial security problems, the more you have to agree with that and design accordingly,” says Kowal. “However, the OT side is where you make your money (Figure 3). That’s where the C-suite needs to get together and say, ‘We are go-ing to do this; what’s the best way to do it?’”

There are many other groups in the IIC, such as the Security Working Group. “It came up with an Industrial Internet Security Framework (IISF) in September 2016,” says Kowal. “The group will be coming out with best practices to secure IIoT systems as well,” he says.

DO IIOT RIGHT

“The Smart Factory Task Group really focuses on what is different about manufacturing IIoT,” says B&R’s Kowal. “We are working hard to not reinvent the wheel. If someone else is already working on a standard, we want to refer-ence that,” he says. “We are also focusing on how mid-market man-ufacturers can benefit and start to participate. Some Smart Factory members are focused on brown-field. We’re also looking at what I call a ‘green patch’ in a brownfield. You may not be in a position to build a greenfield facility, but you may have a product or process that would benefit from building a dedicated line within your exist-ing facility that’s pure-play IIoT. Think of the focused factory and factory-within-a-factory concepts.”

The IIC and the SFTG has their work cut out for them, says Dell ’s Smith. “It would be great to just buy a single IoT platform and be done with it,” he says. “The good news is people are thinking about

CASE STUDY: SMART FACTORY, INDUSTRY 4.0 & 250M

POSSIBLE CONFIGURATIONS

This case study describes how a smart factory, using IIoT principles, achieves

batch-of-one production of industrial PCs in 250 million possible configurations.

The 700,000 sq ft factory uses 60 million discrete electronic components per

month and has produce more than 1 million industrial PCs installed worldwide.

Read more here or at http://bit.ly/2jWn5p0.

“The Smart Factory Task Group is tasked to look at this IIoT technology and present

how a machine builder can integrate it into its product offering for the factory floor.”

http://www.controldesign.com/assets/wp_downloads/pdf/CD1701-BR-Case-Study.pdf?utm_campaign=CLIENT%20B%26R%20170217%20Automation%20Software&utm_source=Special%20Report

http://bit.ly/2jWn5p0



this; there are plenty of answers on what to use as an IoT plat-form. However, it’s complicated—most large enterprises are buying multiple platforms to suit differ-ent needs. The bad news is there are too many answers. At latest count from our tracking, there are more than 420 IoT platforms out there now. And most are generic and horizontal, not necessarily related to smart factories. That’s too many options.”

Which IoT platform to use is not an easy decision, continues Smith. “It’s something where, as an industry and in manufacturing, people need to analyze and weigh multiple options before making a decision,” he says. “With IoT, what is particularly interesting is

where IT meets OT—IT being the traditional data, infrastructure and management of the data, and OT being the need for business deci-sions to be made based on the use case you are deploying. With the IoT, Dell often speaks with both the CIO and the factory manager or business-line VP, for example. You need to talk to both in order for IoT purchasing decisions to be directly correlated to tangible ROI for the business. You need to start with the business need and use case and then decide what tech-nology will enable it.”

The SFTG is focused on the end user and OEMs, says IoT One’s Walenza. “The IIC has been very successful in addressing technology providers, the original members, and helping them to collaborate with each other,” he says. “The IIC is working to communicate what has been learned to end users, and the members feel very strongly about educating the end users and OEMs. They want the work they have been doing to be known, influence the market and educate their customers. That’s really the SFTG focus on the end-user side.”

SFTG RESOURCE

Check out the Smart Factory Task Group (SFTG) at

www.iiconsortium.org/vertical-markets/manufacturing.htm.

http://www.iiconsortium.org/vertical-markets/manufacturing.htm

The advent of Industry 4.0 will require machine designs with more flexibility and new mechatronic approaches, and software engineering will play an increasingly large role in reducing development time and costs.

This need for speedier software development can be satisfied with mapp (modular application technology) from B&R Industrial Automation, which takes advan-tage of function blocks that can be used to supplement ladder logic or any number of IEC 61131 pro-gramming languages.

“The original idea of mapp was born in the United States, so the ease of use in ladder logic was a key focus,” explains Marcel Voigt, senior solu-

tions engineer at B&R. “If you use it in textual languages, it’s even easier to use. In ladder you typically add contacts and coils to the function block inputs and outputs. In structured text, you typically don’t need to assign ad-ditional variables; instead you use the function block instance inputs and outputs directly.”

While all-in-one blocks are not a new concept, most solutions focus on motion, says Voigt. “Many have a block that can drive a single axis,” he explains. “With mapp, we’ve gone outside the motion with that one block. All of the infrastructure that you have to build around a motion object—alarm handling, recipe and file handling, data logging—is usually thrown in at the last minute. We have all that covered. The mapp alarm basic and the mapp recipe and mapp data already talk to each other. If you

have to update parameters on the axis through mapp recipe, you can synchronize the process across dif-ferent program tasks.”

You can record variables, and the recordings are saved as a .csv file which, for example, can be used for a simple condition monitoring solution.

THE HARDWARE-SOFTWARE

BALANCE

“Over the past 40 years, the proportion of software develop-ment involved when designing new machinery and systems has skyrocketed from 5 to more than 50%,” explains Christoph Trappl, manager of international applica-tions at B&R. “First and foremost, the production processes them-selves are becoming more and more complex, especially in light of the increasing mass customization of products,” he says.



Follow the mapp for programming with function blocksThe need for speedier software

development can be satisfied

with mapp (modular application

technology) from B&R Industrial

Automation

The mapp RoboX and mapp Teach functions make it faster and easier than ever to get robotic systems configured and ready for operation.



Software solutions are easier to protect than hardware, explains Voigt. “Once it’s compiled and a library is generated in binary format, there’s no way you can reverse-engineer that because you can no longer see the source code,” he says. “If they have a machine without the source code and they want to change some-thing, we have to tell them that it is not possible.”

The increasing demand for soft-ware means more developers are needed. “This is a problem for many companies, since finding these kinds of developers is difficult and expensive,” says Trappl. As mass customization expands in the OEM market, manufacturing individual products under mass production conditions will require more intricate software solutions, and Industry 4.0 will turn from vision to reality.

Even though the software will be-come more complex and individu-alized, many functions, including controlling single- or multi-axis systems or recipe management, will recur. “If you look at the mapp solution for a single axis,

there are about 25 functions inside the MpAxisBasic block,” says Voigt. “And that one block replac-es about 30 PLCopen blocks. So, for example, three inputs replace three networks in PLCopen.”

The mapp technology is a modular concept that combines frequently used functions but does not exclude the use of standard func-tions and is integrated into B&R’s Automation Studio development platform. The function blocks in mapp are designed to make it possible, for example, to put multi-axis systems coupled with cam profiles, electronic gears or various robot kinematics into op-eration in a matter of just a couple hours. It also includes a Web-

based faceplate for monitoring and configuring mapp functions. The function blocks have been field-tested in a multiple of applications and are maintained by B&R. Full documentation and help functions complete the mapp toolkit. This minimizes the risks associated with the loss of a developer who is responsible for programming, which can not only hinder soft-ware in progress, but also cripple further development of existing applications.

“If you write or the customer writes its own wrapper block around PLCopen, the customer has to maintain that,” explains Voigt. “If you do it in mapp, you know B&R will maintain the libraries and make sure they are backward-compatible and you simply update the library.”

FURTHER DEVELOPMENT

At the introduction of mapp in

NEW KINEMATICS CAPABILITIES THROUGH MAPP TECHNOLOGY

Learn how mapp RoboX can be used to control any kinematic system with up to

15 axes at http://bit.ly/2jXhOhM.

“The mapp alarm basic and the mapp recipe and mapp data already talk to each other. If you have to update

parameters on the axis through mapp recipe, you can synchronize the process

across different program tasks.”

http://bit.ly/2jXhOhM

December 2014, 64 functions and function blocks, 15 libraries and 19 groups were available, and, because of the technology’s complete inte-gration into Automation Studio, all future functions become available through an update. “Automation Studio is required,” explains Voigt. “It’s based on PLCopen and stan-dard B&R libraries and therefore mapp can always be complemented with standards.”

In the near future, mapp will be more deeply implemented into Automation Studio. “You’ll have some graphical components that are Web-based,” explains Voigt.

“With a standard Web browser or Automation Studio, you can configure what you want your mapp components to do. For example, with MpPackML you simply dis-able the states that you don’t use and then you hit save and the state model is immediately updated,” says

Voigt. “I’ve been around PackML for about 10 years. MpPackML is by far the easiest implementation, when it comes to defining the state model, I have ever seen. You are simply left with programming what happens in the individual states whenever they are active.”



WHAT MODULAR APPLICATION TECHNOLOGY CAN DO

FOR AUTOMATION PROGRAMMING

With mapp, industrial machinery developers program less and configure

more. Mapp stands for “modular application” technology. It’s all about mak-

ing standards-based automation software easier to use, faster to develop

and more functional, connected, consistent and secure. Read more here or

at http://bit.ly/2jn9XIB.

http://www.controldesign.com/assets/wp_downloads/pdf/CD1701-BR-mapp.pdf?utm_campaign=CLIENT%20B%26R%20170217%20Automation%20Software&utm_source=Special%20Report

http://bit.ly/2jn9XIB

Additional ResourcesWant more? Here are some additional resources you may be interested in:



WHY CONVERGENCE IS THE FUTURE OF INDUSTRY

Industrial productivity is benefiting from the convergence of automa-tion functionalities on a single HMI dashboard, as part of an integrated control capability based on international standards. This convergence is enabled by Moore’s Law—the ever-increasing power and shrinking cost of mainstream computing power.

Read more here or at http://bit.ly/2jWd2QQ.

SEAMLESS SAFETY FOR PRODUCTION LINES

Industry 4.0 demands modular, flexible production lines. While these qualities are being implemented successfully at a functional control level, achieving a comparable degree of flexibility in line-level safety technology has so far seemed an insurmountable hurdle. B&R aims to change that by combining OPC UA and openSAFETY to form Safe Line Automation – providing seamless safety for integrated production lines.

Read more here or at http://bit.ly/2jXiFiy.

THE CONNECTED MACHINE: HOW TO FUTURE-PROOF YOUR

MACHINE AUTOMATION STRATEGY

How can you future-proof your machine automation strategy? By specify-ing automation platforms based on the distributed intelligence and com-munications and programming standards, largely available today, that the Industrial Internet of Things will use to connect machines to each other, to management systems and to analytics.

Read more here or at http://bit.ly/2jn6iKU.

PACKAGING 4.0 AND HOW IT CAN ENABLE

OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE

Every three years, the world packaging machinery community meets in Dusseldorf, Germany, for the Interpack show. In this report, industry thought leaders discuss the much anticipated fourth generation of pack-aging machinery, bringing a new level of flexibility and connectivity to consumer goods producers.

Read more here or at http://bit.ly/2jnnHmP.

http://www.controldesign.com/assets/wp_downloads/pdf/CD1701-BR-Convergence.pdf?utm_campaign=CLIENT%20B%26R%20170217%20Automation%20Software&utm_content=Why%20convergence%20is%20the%20future%20of%20industry&utm_source=Special%20Report

http://bit.ly/2jWd2QQ

http://www.br-automation.com/en-us/company/customer-magazine/seamless-safety-for-production-lines/?utm_campaign=CLIENT B&R 170217 Automation Software&utm_source=Special Report

http://bit.ly/2jXiFiy

http://www.controldesign.com/assets/wp_downloads/pdf/CD1701-BR-Connected-Machine.pdf?utm_campaign=CLIENT%20B%26R%20170217%20Automation%20Software&utm_source=Special%20Report

http://bit.ly/2jn6iKU

http://www.controldesign.com/assets/wp_downloads/pdf/CD1701-BR-Packaging-4.0.pdf?utm_campaign=CLIENT%20B%26R%20170217%20Automation%20Software&utm_source=Special%20Report

http://bit.ly/2jnnHmP

http://bit.ly/2jWd2QQ

http://bit.ly/2jXiFiy

http://bit.ly/2jn6iKU

http://bit.ly/2jnnHmP

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