December 18, 2017 - The CC-Link Partner Association (CLPA), in association with the OPC Foundation, has announced an OPC UA companion specification for the CLPA’s new “CSP+ for Machine” technology to further ease the implementation of Industry 4.0 type applications.
CSP+ for Machine is an extension of the CLPA’s existing “CSP+” (Control & Communication System Profile) that provides network configuration and maintenance by offering profiles that describe each device on a CC-Link IE or CC-Link network. CSP+ technology has been established for some time and provides drag and drop network configuration from CSP+ files provided by CLPA partner vendors, allowing device libraries to be created. This announcement takes the technology one step further by essentially allowing whole machines to be treated in the same way, meaning that complex systems can now be dealt with as if they are a single device.
The CLPA has already established itself as a specialist in Industry 4.0 applications with its CC-Link IE open gigabit Ethernet and CC-Link IE Field Basic, which extends CC-Link IE compatibility to 100Mbit Ethernet devices. CSP+4M continues this trend by working to simplify the process of extracting data from factory systems via the industry standard open connectivity of OPC UA. CSP+ for Machine uses XML to provide a variety of information related to the machine. This includes: machine specifications, application software, what data should be acquired and how, and the relationship between machine data and information.
Since it is typical for a given manufacturing site to operate a variety of process equipment based on different technologies, this open standards based approach hopfully means that the current challenges which prevent efficient transparency and better management of processes will soon become a thing of the past.
