Back to:

Automation Portals

PTO 2009 General Assembly Web-Meeting, Celebrates 15 years in North America

By Bill Lydon - Contributing Editor

Since many members are constrained by tight travel budgets, this year’s PTO General Assembly Meeting was a Web event conducted by PTO Executive Director, Michael Bryant. The Web event included a 15th year anniversary cake ceremony with the PTO staff blowing out the candles.

Membership is down about 8%, which is not surprising given the current economy. The major losses have been smaller companies, primarily distributors and system integrators.

PROFIBUS and PROFINET have both seen substantial growth.

PROFIBUS

There is a total installed base of 28.3 million PROFIBUS nodes through 2008. PROFIBUS growth is accelerating with 4.5 million nodes added on 2007 and 5.0 million added in 2008. The goal is to reach 50 million nodes by 2012 and Bryant feels this will be achieved.

“50 Million Nodes by 2012!”

PROFINET

There are a total of 1.6 million nodes of PROFINET installed, indicating broad adoption. The total installed PROFINET nodes in 2007 were 1.4 million nodes. PTO anticipated about a 37% growth based on analyst predictions through by 2010 resulting in a total of 3 million nodes. The number in 2008 was 1.6 million or a growth rate of about 40%, which is ahead of goal. Mike Bryant stated, “we believe PROFINET is the leading industrial Ethernet.”

New PTO Staff

Manny Mandrusiak, Director of Technology Marketing was added to the team as a technical marketing person. Manny is the primary person doing the “road shows.”

Martin Raab took over as manger of the PIC (PROFI Interface Center).

Visit with Carl Henning

I had the opportunity to meet with Carl Henning after the annual meeting and discuss PTO activities. Henning indicated that the PTO is always looking for the best ways to communicate PTO activities to the industry. PTO currently uses newsletters, Webinars, blogs, tweets, and training seminars.

Noting that the primary loss of members was distributors and system integrators, I asked Henning what the value of membership is for these groups. Henning indicated the discounts on training alone are worth the membership. Distributors and system integrators can also gain business referrals by being part of the organization and networking with other members. As Henning said, “if we know ‘em we can refer ‘em.”

New Profile - PROFIenergy

I asked Henning what is new technically and he described the new PROFIenergy power-saving profile energy profile.

PROFIenergy will enable dynamic energy management by defining various energy-saving modes for devices. The energy-saving profile will enable simple, standardized addressing of device energy-saving modes and an evaluation of their feedback. This will make it easy for plant control systems to enable optimum energy utilization during productive and nonproductive times of different durations. The aim is to manage energy consumption without impeding the production process.

PROFIenergy will enable defined energy-saving conditions to be triggered over the network. The resulting opportunities for saving energy are large. For example, a typical body-shop line in the automotive industry consumes around 80 kilowatts during normal operation. The installed systems continue to consume 20 kilowatts even when the line is not in operation. Reducing 20 kilowatts of “unproductive consumption” by means of appropriate energy management adds up to large savings. Significant reductions in power consumption can also be achieved during production by deactivating specific components that do not need to be operating all the time – for instance, lasers. If a laser is used every two minutes and is switched to standby for just 30 seconds between each application, it will save a considerable amount of energy over time and across the number of devices, and will reduce associated costs.

Different energy saving modes for devices allows controllers to easily and uniformly activate energy saving modes of devices and to evaluate their responses. As a result, energy can be managed without adversely affecting the production process.

When developing the energy efficiency modes, an attempt was made to allow for the diversity and technical options of as many component groups and suppliers as possible. If PC-based systems are used, as is the case for some process controllers or robot controllers, the standard "Wake on LAN" service can be used in many cases. This protocol, also referred to as "Magic Packet", was defined and standardized in 1995 by Hewlett Packard. With this technology, which is currently used in PCs throughout the world, the controller passes into an extreme energy savings mode. Only the connection to the network is kept alive in order to react to the wake-up command in the form of the "Magic Packet."

These are possible modes:

Mode 0

All energy consuming systems of components are shut down, switches integrated into the component and the PROFINET 10 stack are deactivated, and safety-relevant functions of components are no longer supported; a changeover to operating mode can only be initiated by the "Magic Packet."

Mode 1

This mode was defined specifically for highly integrated components. It differs from Mode 0 only in that the PROFINET 10 stack and, thus, the integrated switches remain activated meaning that the network infrastructure continues to function. 10 statuses of the component are still not available, and the transition to a higher mode is initiated by standardized PROFINET protocol.

Mode 2

In this mode, the PROFINET 10 stack and the integrated switches are active, and 10 statuses and safety-relevant functions are available in some cases, depending on the preceding configuration. The transition to operating mode is initiated by standardized PROFINET protocol.

Mode 3

Operating mode - all subsystems of the component are activated, and the component signals that it is "ready to operate."

For simpler configuration of the overall system, information is needed regarding System Vendors and the energy efficiency modes supported by the component along with its time behavior. Among other things, the standardized description indicates which energy efficiency modes the component Device Manufacturer supports and the length of the individual power-up times until the "readyoperate" status is reached. The higher- level management software can use this information to calculate the time- and energy-optimized power-up of the (sub) system from the individual parameters, that is, to achieve the optimal sequence.

As described previously, all changeovers from one energy efficiency mode to another, except for "wake up" from Mode 0, are managed via the PROFINET 10 communication layer. For this purpose, PI is offering a standardized data record that allows the required mode transitions to be initiated via defined action bits.

In addition, the data record provides standardized diagnostic information regarding the current status of the component. With this approach, a deliberate decision was made to eliminate the mapping of functions and status information onto a pure 10 interface. By defining a uniform data record, the interface is kept the same for all components, which greatly simplifies the programming of the power management.

The elaborate engineering required for energy-saving functions must often be carried out specifically for each device, which, to date, has been a major obstacle for the implementation of energy-saving measures.

The PROFIenergy profile looks like it will simplify energy management. This is a clever idea that provides distributed intelligence architecture for energy management.

Last Thought

I asked Henning why the PTO is so successful and he responded, “the success is built on knowledge and professionalism.”

Based on my experience over the years with Carl Henning, Mike Bryant and the other PTO people, I agree 100%.

Automation.com Real-time Information for the Automation Professional May. 26, 2012

Cart

Automation.com

NOTICE: Your use of Automation.com constitutes your agreement to the Legal Notices, Policies, Terms, and Conditions governing its use. You should review these terms before proceeding.Copyright © 2000-2010 Automation.com - automation.com, automationtechies.com, automationtechies, automationtechie, and Member-Match are all trade and service marks of Automation Resources, Inc. All Rights Reserved.