제조업은 한국 산업과 경제의 근간이다. 4차 산업혁명 시대가 코앞으로 오자 곳곳에서 한국 제조업의 생산성을 높이자며 지능화에 대해 목소리를 높였다. 어디에나 붙던 스마트는 공장에도 붙어 스마트팩토리라는 말이 등장했고 어느새 일반화됐다. 스마트팩토리는 공장 자동화보다 진보한 개념이다. 단위 공정별로 자동화와 최적화가 이루어진 공장 자동화는 데이터는 개별적으로 수집한다. 반면 스마트팩토리는 데이터가 연결되어 있다. 따라서 데이터를 수집하면 데이터끼리 연계가 가능하다. 그렇다면 수많은 단에서 발생하는 데이터를 연계하려면 어떤 방법을 사용해야 할까? OPC-UA는 산업용 자동화 애플리케이션을 위한 공급자 독립적인 통신 프로토콜이다. 이 프로토콜은 유연하고 완벽하게 독립적이다. 따라서 인더스트리얼 4.0의 구현을 위한 이상적인 통신 프로토콜로 간주되고 있다.
Manufacturing is the foundation of Korean industry and economy. As the era of the 4th industrial revolution approaches, voices are being raised everywhere about increasing the productivity of Korean manufacturing and about intelligence. The word smart, which is everywhere, is also being applied to factories, and the term smart factory has emerged and has become commonplace. Smart factory is a more advanced concept than factory automation. Factory automation, where automation and optimization are carried out for each unit process, collects data individually. On the other hand, smart factory data is connected. Therefore, when data is collected, it is possible to link the data.
So what method should we use to link data generated from numerous stages?

▲ OPC-UA communication protocol
OPC-UA (OPC Unified Architecture) is a vendor-independent communication protocol for industrial automation applications. This protocol is flexible and completely independent. Therefore, it is considered an ideal communication protocol for implementing Industry 4.0.
OPC-UA bridges the gap between the IP-based world of IT and the production floor. All production process data is transmitted via a single protocol, whether within a machine, between machines, or between machines and cloud databases.
However, OPC-UA cannot cover all communications that take place in smart factory sites. The TSN (Time Sensitive Networking) standard can maximize the advantages of OPC-UA by providing a data transmission speed that is at least 10 times faster than the existing industrial Ethernet protocol.

▲ B&R Vice President Sa Jae-hoon (Photo = Reporter Lee Su-min)
B&R, part of the ABB Group, has been working on OPC-UA for many years and is also active in TSN. We met with B&R’s Vice President Sa Jae-hoon to ask about the two standards and how OPC-UA and TSN can be utilized to implement smart factories.
Q. What do you do at B&R? A. At B&R, I am in charge of new business development, marketing, and sales in the smart factory field.
Q. Recently, the word OPC-UA has been heard quite often in the industrial automation sector. What is OPC-UA? A. OPC-UA is a communication protocol that has been receiving considerable attention as smart factories and Industry 4.0 are becoming fully realized, and is being distributed by the OPC-UA Foundation. The origin of OPC-UA is OPC (OLE for Process Control). However, as the industry’s needs for smart factories have grown, the OPC Foundation seems to have changed the definition of OPC. From 'OLE for Process Control' to 'Open Platform Communication'.
Q. How active is the OPC-UA communication protocol in the global industrial world? A. Currently, almost all suppliers of industrial automation devices are supplying products with built-in OPC-UA communication protocol. Just three years ago, there were not this many. B&R was the first company to supply PLC products supporting the OPC-UA protocol. Now, major companies such as Siemens, Rockwell, and Mitsubishi are supplying basic specifications or OPC-UA protocol. It is especially widely used in controllers.
Q. TSN is a standard mentioned together with OPC-UA. A. TSN is a standard for the future Ethernet. Current Ethernet operates at a speed of 100Mbps. However, as automation equipment becomes more advanced and equipment becomes more high-performance, the amount of data that needs to be processed increases. This created the need for a standard for gigabit Ethernet, and that is how TSN emerged. The term 'Time Sensitive Networking' has two meanings: real-time and time determinism.
Q. Please explain the two characteristics. A. Real-time means that devices in the same network system are connected in real time. There may be a delay when divided into clock units, but the devices recognize it as real-time. In the automation field, real-time refers to how often robot controllers, motion controllers, PLCs, etc. communicate and at what intervals.
Let me explain timing determinism as a conversation between two people. Two people are talking in real time, and the conversation can be successful only if they are in sync to some extent. If you answer a specific question 5 minutes later or ask the next question before the answer has been given, the conversation will be distorted. In the automation field, each component communicates with each other in real time, and this must be processed within the process time that must be processed. Therefore, it is necessary to operate regularly with a certain cycle to maintain a high-performance communication cycle. Timing determinism is an important factor in high-speed I/O processing and high-performance motion synchronization control.
And TSN is a standard that has both real-time and time determinism.
Q. Are there many products that follow the TSN standard? A. TSN is not a complete standard. The internal standards are still being newly created and supplemented. The current TSN standard products are prototypes. Companies like ours, B&R, are working hard to supplement this TSN standard. You may have heard about the 'IIC (Industrial Internet Consortium) TSN Interoperability Testbed'. The participating companies are working to ensure that the voice of the industry is reflected in the IEEE.
TSN standards are actively being developed in network switch products. This is because it has become increasingly important to properly connect network systems in the middle as they become larger due to gigabit speeds. IIC participants are building a number of network switches, and B&R has prototypes of configuration tools, CPUs, and I/O products.

▲ Using OPC UA over TSN
No need for traditional factory-level fieldbus systems
Q. How do OPC-UA and TSN integrate and operate? A. OPC-UA is a communication protocol that operates on a physical standard called TSN. If TSN is a highway, OPC-UA is a specification of the specific types of vehicles that can be driven on that highway. OPC-UA is currently used in 100Mbps Ethernet, but the data processing requirements in smart factories continue to increase. This means that the number of components that can be connected to the network system is increasing.
It is a basic requirement that the lowest level sensor to the highest level equipment be built as a neural network. If the neural network is not built, there must be a gateway and middleware to connect them in the middle. This delays speed and interferes with decision-making, increasing production costs. Therefore, TSN is an essential network technology for systems such as CPS (Cyber Physical System).
Q. At the 'IIoT Innovation DAY' seminar of the 'Smart Factory·Automation Industry Exhibition 2019' held in March, you said that the fieldbus information model is the biggest advantage of OPC-UA. Could you explain in more detail? A. If you search for information models on the OPC-UA Foundation homepage, you will find information on 17 information models. Information models for automation technologies such as Ethernet POWERLINK and CNC are provided here.
Engineers who want to build smart factories are concerned about how to use numerous existing industrial fieldbus standards in conjunction with OPC-UA. A company can solve this problem by creating additional functions on its own, but this leads to the problem of incompatibility with products from other companies in the industry.
The information model provided by the OPC-UA Foundation includes the standards already used in the market and how to handle events that occur in each component when using OPC-UA. Engineers can simply use this model. This model is growing.
Q. What other advantages do you think OPC-UA has? A. The biggest advantage of OPC-UA is that it is an open protocol. Any company and OS can use the OPC-UA communication protocol. It is the most ideal protocol for connectivity in smart factories.
Q. What are the additional advantages of TSN?
A. TSN has specifications that can process data at high speeds. Even looking at the demo system that B&R has been developing since 2017, TSN is 18 times faster than other industrial Ethernet standards for motion control.
Q. Recently, 5G is expanding beyond the mobile communications sector and into the manufacturing sector. 5G is wireless communication. It transmits information to numerous nodes wirelessly. Because it is wireless, the real-time and time determinism of 5G cannot satisfy the precision of machines. Also, it is not possible to use 5G for internal machine communication. Therefore, in order to bring 5G data down to the OT area, it must be used together with TSN.
5G has the limitation of being wireless. However, even so, by utilizing 5G, you can control high-speed components without separate CPU investment by utilizing the CPU resources you already have. When this data goes to the cloud, you control the connected components through the TSN terminal with invisible CPU power. 5G will create a new market. And together with TSN, it will be used according to each target application.
Q. How does B&R help companies that want to build smart factories? A. B&R supplies industrial CPUs, HMIs, motion control, high-speed I/O, and safety modules. In addition to hardware, we also supply hardware operation software tools.
Q. Please explain B&R’s strengths in OPC-UA and TSN standards. A. B&R is the company that provides OPC-UA server and client functions to PLCs. Also, if you want to use OPC-UA in existing CPUs, you need to use an option card, so it costs money. However, all types of CPUs supplied by B&R have OPC-UA installed as a basic feature.
TSN is not yet a finalized standard. In order to properly use TSN, the configuration of the network system used is important. B&R is developing the tools as well as the hardware and plans to release them by the fourth quarter of this year.
By 2020, B&R plans to integrate OPC-UA and TSN into its motion drives. Up to now, motion controllers still use industrial Ethernet standards. OPC-UA and TSN are the keys to achieving the ideal goal of connecting all types of devices. To achieve this, OPC-UA and TSN will be integrated into every component on the market.
Q. What are B&R’s strengths that differentiate it from other automation companies? A. First, it provides open technology. The tools for the engineering environment that B&R uses internally use the AC standard language. The fact that the language is standardized means that engineers who use the tools create applications in the standard language. Even if you don't use B&R's tools later, you can create applications using tools that use other standard languages. If you create it in a specific language, you are dependent on that solution. B&R is not closed.
The second is that we are leading the way in supplying the element technologies related to smart factories. When the standards are released to the market, the products must be usable and stable for practical use. The products supplied by B&R incorporate smart factory technology. They are also verified and mass-produced at the headquarters, so they can be matched to the target application and level. We supply element technologies even if the customer does not develop them themselves.
Another additional advantage is that, unlike traditional PC suppliers, we provide solutions that cover DCS as well. In addition, we have well-established integration for safety, etc.
Q. What can B&R do for equipment developers who are not OPC-UA equipment adopters? A. Manufacturing is quite developed in Korea. And what is manufactured is machinery. Making a machine means that there must be a CPU that can control the machine, and it must be connected to external products through communication. The hardware supplied by B&R has OPC-UA installed as a basic feature. If you make a target machine with our tool, OPC-UA is supported as a basic feature.
Although not many, there are many customers who develop PC-based Windows products. To create an OPC-UA product, you can purchase an OPC-UA stack or use an open source sample and develop it yourself. However, if you determine that development is risky, you can purchase a B&R CPU and use it as a gateway.
We have success stories in various industries. When connecting data from legacy equipment to the cloud, the hardware is equipped with software that can manage KPIs, not just act as a simple gateway. Orange Box is a representative example.

▲ B&R Orange Box
Orange Box is a kind of edge controller that processes specific signals to perform predictive maintenance or predictive control, monitors energy, and manages KPI indices of each company. We will provide elemental technologies to companies looking for such solutions, and to companies that have the technology to operate and control existing facilities but want to create additional profits or service content but judge that it is risky to have the solution on their own.
Q. Lastly, please give a word to e4ds readers. A. As the industry becomes smarter, engineers working in the field are facing more homework. A typical example is the task of finding new solutions and applying them to the field. If people themselves are not smart, it is not easy to become smart. Half of B&R is also engineers. We have the same concerns. Therefore, I would appreciate it if you thought of it as a place where we can share our concerns. We want to appropriately combine our element technologies to serve as a tool suitable for achieving our customers’ goals.