AUTOMATION
CONNECTING TECHNOLOGIES
ROCKWELL AUTOMATION
ROCKWELL AUTOMATION JOINS INDUSTRY EFFORT
ON OPC UA TIME-SENSITIVE NETWORKING
Rockwell Automation is joining industry
leaders ABB, Belden, Bosch Rexroth, B&R, Cisco,
Hilscher, KUKA, National Instruments, Parker
Hannifin, Phoenix Contact, Pilz, Schneider
Electric, TTTech and WAGO (collectively known
as Shapers) to create a communication solution
for real-time and sensor-to-cloud applications
in industrial operations.
The solution will be based on the OPC UA
pro tocol, which allows easy and secure
sharing of information across different
vendor technologies and the time-sensitive
networking (TSN) suite of standards, which
helps improve latency and robustness in
converged industrial networks.
“Connecting technologies across an industrial
organization while maintaining multivendor
interoperability requires a harmonized,
interoperable solution that uses consistent
information models, communication and
application behavior (together known as
application profiles),” said Paul Brooks, business
development manager, Rockwell Automation.
“That’s what this group of automation leaders
are combining their expertise to create.
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Our solution will give manufacturing and
industrial organizations best-of-breed I/O
device control, motion and safety application
profiles,” said Sebastian Sachse, B&R Industrial
Automation.
To ensure the emerging OPC UA TSN solution
supports interoperability of different vendor
technologies on the same network, the
companies are engaging with industry
consortia such as Avnu, IEEE, IIC, LNI 4.0 and
OPC Foundation. The companies are also
planning an announcement in the coming
months on how to achieve unified application
profiles, which is the last hurdle to device
harmonization. They aim to provide one-stop-
shop certification of the overall solution up to
the device-profile level.
The companies have already published
whitepapers on OPC UA TSN technology, such
as an IIC whitepaper on converged traffic types.
They have also made significant contributions
to the recently released PubSub extension of
OPC UA, and plan to set up a collaboration
between the IIC and LNI testbeds.
About Rockwell
Automation
Rockwell Automation Inc.
(NYSE: ROK), the world’s largest
company dedicated to industrial
automation and information,
makes its customers more
productive and the world more
sustainable.
Headquartered in Milwaukee,
Wis., Rockwell Automation
employs approximately 22,000
people serving customers in
more than 80 countries.
www.rockwellautomation.com