The attendees at this year's PROFINET seminar held in Milwaukee were 70% OEMs, 20% SI's, and 10% Device Manufacturers. These would be considered typical numbers for this show, but what is untypical is the number of Process members attending (70%) vs Factory (30%), perhaps showing a niche in PROFINET (or, more likely Profibus) in the area. As there were questions on Intrinsic safety, as well APL, the process seems to have a niche focus in Profibus from legacy networks.
Unlike other Safety protocols, PROFIsafe openly markets and supports Wireless connectivity. A Kuka case study recognizes 80% cost savings on wire cable by using PROFIsafe over wireless. The PROFIsafe protocol has a few advantages to support wireless capability, but other safety protocols support this too (CIP Safety, FSoE, OPC UA Safety, among others). Although the market capability is small (10% of the total automation market) the Safety AGV market is growing (see Material Handling intelligence memo) and uses a significant amount of safety (more and more) in their solutions.
TSN was discussed, and some of the nuances were asked in the Q&A session. PROFInet with TSN will be available in the next year or so, with products (all Siemens) coming out in the next few years. Inevitably, PROFINET IRT will be set aside for TSN, but it will take some time. A TSN whitepaper on strategy is available. HMS will be coming out with a paper on PROFINET w/ TSN. Our first TSN implementation will be CC-LINK IE FIELD with TSN, but PROFINET w/ TSN is next on the table.
Sustainability is a growing movement within Factory and Process automation. PROFInet and Siemens have some built-in tools based on their decision to maintain a PROFIEnergy functionality, established some years ago as a tool for large Automation providers to precisely monitor Energy usage, and to make some decisions based on this usage, such as turning off production lines, when possible, but also lowering torque usage over the lifetime of a production line or machine, thus increasing machine or system lifetime. As PROFIEnergy products become more prevalent in the marketplace, Machine builders and SI's may be forced into using them to harness some functionality (such as consistent energy monitoring) or be used in some automation plants. CIP Energy is similar as well, the ODVA website shows products with CIP Energy objects on their platform.