Smartness realized through a flexible structure that guarantees speed and regularity
Based on compatibility with OPC UA such as CC Link, Power Link, and TSN

No matter how good the technology is, it is useless if there is no standard for the protocol. The core of the 4th industrial revolution is convergence. Only when compatibility is secured between factories, equipment, and objects can the characteristics of smart factories be utilized, such as securing price and quality competitiveness through increased productivity and reduced defect rates.

The government-led 'Smart Manufacturing Innovation Vision 2025', which aims to build 30,000 smart factories by 2025, and the 'Smart Factory Standardization Promotion Strategy', which aims to establish a standardization support system, are establishing national standards and proving their importance. However, in order to resolve difficulties in system design and maintenance due to different protocols between equipment, support for the introduction of OPC UA, a common standard for protocols between equipment, has begun.

OPC UA is a vendor-independent communication protocol for industrial automation applications. It is based on the client-server principle and allows communication from individual sensors and actuators to ERPC systems or the cloud. OPC-UA also bridges the gap between the IP-based world of IT and the production site. All production data is transmitted via a single protocol between machines and between machines and cloud databases. OPC is characterized by eliminating the need for traditional factory-level fieldbus systems.



The protocol is platform independent and features built-in safety mechanisms. And because it is flexible and independent, it is considered an important protocol for implementing the 4th industrial revolution.

Accordingly, various protocols are demonstrating their technological prowess based on compatibility with OPC UA.

CC-link
According to a survey commissioned to IHS Research on industrial networks, CC-Link ranked first in adoption rate in Korea and Asia, and showed high usage rates in the automotive, liquid crystal, and semiconductor industries.

CC-Link is currently used as the main design management network at home and abroad and is recognized in the field of large-capacity optical communication. Among them, CC-Link iField supports ultra-high-speed networks at high speeds of 1Gbps, and in 2011, CC-Link Safety was released after CC-Field Motion, which expanded motion and synchronization functions, and expanded the scope to include security issues.

In the IoT era, networks are key technologies. Strengthening them is the duty of the CC Link Association. It is suitable for IE because of its high speed and various features. It is optimal to integrate one network into the production line and monitor it, but in the actual field, multiple networks are mixed. It is important to collect and analyze information between multiple networks with complex structures.

Kim Myeong-sim, manager of the CC-Link Association, said, “We are collaborating to use IO-Link and CC-Link, which are growing as sensor networks, together in a single network, and we have also strengthened connectivity through compatibility with Profinet, which has the largest market share in Europe.” He continued, “First of all, we announced CSP+ in conjunction with the OPC Foundation to strengthen the connection with OPC UA.”

CSP+, based on the compatibility of OPC UA, a high-reliability industrial communication data exchange standard that enables data exchange between multi-vendor products and across different OSs, improves the operating rate of each device by sharing information of each device to realize small-volume production of various kinds. Its representative features are that it can be used without a manual or program for a separate device, it integrates with various tools, and it supports multiple languages and XML.

Since the screen specifications for each company and device were not unified, it was difficult to compare, and software modifications were required, which resulted in high costs. To improve these problems, CSP+ for devices was introduced to simply define information for various devices. Manager Kim Myeong-sim said, “There are limits to monitoring all the information provided by devices on multiple lines in the field, but CSP+ displays only the information you want, allowing for efficient management.”

Power Link and TSN technology
Leading companies such as the US and Germany are focusing on single platforms such as cloud and facilities. Korea also needs to establish its own basic strategy and specific platform for the smart market, but is facing difficulties.

Ethernet-based protocols such as Ethernet Powerlink, Profinet, CC Link, and IRT are used for high-performance servo, motion, and robotics control, but among these, OPC UA is widely utilized because of its powerful protocol structure and wide range. This enables efficient connection between devices and objects, excluding existing gateways.

However, OPC-UA does not fully meet the level of openness required for comprehensive communication integration in the field. To solve this problem, the Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) technology standard was developed. It has a data transmission speed that is more than 10 times faster than the existing industrial Ethernet protocol.

The industry is still mainly using fieldbus, not Ethernet. The problem with this is that it provides text-based protocols, making it difficult and unintuitive for developers to analyze information. The signals are also different for each developer. However, Sa Jae-hoon, director of the Korea Power Link Association, said, “In order to upload wider and faster data in the future, Ethernet-based protocols will be used, and OPC-UA and TSN will be the main ones.”

Since 2000, OPC-UA has been creating information models and solving security issues, and many international standards have been collaborating with OPC UA. This is because it is flexible enough to be integrated into various media, and it is strong in security, which is the core of automation. According to the results of the association's experiments, it was 18 times faster than the existing industrial protocol, Fieldbus. It is a flexible structure that is fast and guarantees regularity.

Director Sa Jae-hoon explained, “We cannot eliminate fieldbus all at once due to economic and time cost issues. Accordingly, the key task is to gradually reduce gateways and figure out how to introduce Ethernet-based protocols.”