(88) Making sense of SPS IPC Drives 2018, Germany
SPS IPC Drives is by far the biggest industrial automation show in Germany, in Europe, and possibly in the world. “SPS” is PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) in German, “IPC” stands for Industrial Process Control, and “Drives” are tools that control the speed of machinery. The mega fair comprises a dozen exhibition halls, each one practically a trade show in itself, filled with gigantic, colorful booths displaying robots, machines, and control system components. It’s where thousands of engineers, system integrators, machine builders and parts vendors gather for a massive show-and-tell featuring the latest and greatest — sensors, actuators, controllers, software, services and more.
Some stats from the fair:
- Exhibition space 136,000 sqm
- Exhibitors 1,630
- Visitors 65,700.
Considering this was only my first visit, there was no way for me to be able to accurately grasp and make sense of the complete picture in the industry. This is my attempt through the lens of my limited experience and limited booths that I could visit.
Why is the fair important for Industrial IoT platform players?
The answer lies in the picture below that was taken from a talk at the Siemens hall.
The keyword in the slide above is “Knowledge Gap”. There are experts either on the Operational Technology (OT) side of IoT or there are experts on the Software/Cloud (IT) side of the IoT. There are only the rarest of rare who would have knowledge on both sides of the IoT stack. SPS IPC Drives is bridging that divide where you find conversations happening that criss-crosses both sides.
Let’s try to segment the type of exhibitors in the fair…
The exhibitors could be compartmentalized into the following groups:
- Drive systems and components
- Mechanical infrastructure
- Sensor Technology
- Control Technology
- IPCs
- Software and IT in manufacturing
- Interface Technology and power supplies
- Low voltage switching devices
- Human machine interface devices
- Industrial Communication
- Training and consulting
- Functional groups
Given so many exhibitors, I decided to focus on three areas:
- Industrial Communication
- IIoT Platforms
- Sensor and PLC technologies
Industrial Communication
I must tell you that I had a few mental models and frames of reference to be able able to position every exhibitors rightly.
These two were my frames of reference:
- Market share of different industrial networking technologies
2. The industrial automation pyramid
PI (Profibus/Profinet International )Booth
I visited the PI booth to understand the latest and greatest they had to offer. PI is the parent organization for both Profinet and Profibus, which together constitues close to 24% of industrial communication market share, making it the largest automation community in a very fragmented market.
I/O Link
I attended a demo on I/O Link, a standard for or the communication with sensors and also actuators that has also grown exponentially in adoption.
EtherCAT’s popularity growing
In my interactions, I was told that EtherCAT is growing in popularity even though it has just 7% of market share. EtherCAT protocol was introduced by Beckhoff Automation and is growing in popularity especially in Robotic arms.
Support for OPC UA and Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) technology
Time Sensitive Networking is the new technology that transforms standard Ethernet from an “I’ll get it there as soon as I can” communications technology to one that provides timing guarantees for mission-critical applications. Now, you can achieve an entirely new level of determinism.
Three of the largest industrial automation companies- Mitsubishi Electric , Rockwell Automation and Siemens — are joining hands for an open industrial network protocol with TSN. This group will standardize the so called “TSN Profile for Industrial Automation (TSN-IA Profile)” to ensure a multivendor converged TSN network approach for industrial automation where different applications and protocols like OPC UA, PROFINET, EtherNet/IP, etc. can share the same TSN network infrastructure.
https://www.automationworld.com/article/industry-type/all/2019-year-industrial-network-protocol
Industrial IoT Starter Boxes
One trend that I noticed in the fair was the introduction of IoT starter boxes to get started quickly with cloud connectivity.
Softing/HPE/Microsoft
Softing for example offered a starter kit that was a product of an alliance between HPE, Softing and Microsoft Group.
https://h22168.www2.hpe.com/us/en/partners/microsoft/iisk.aspx
Here’s it what it offers:
com.tom Starter Kit
The starter kit contains a Beck com.tom Edge Gateway supporting digital I/O and many industrial networks to connect to your industrial devices. Data gathered from the industrial devices can be processed via an easy-to-use web-based programming tool. Selected data will be automatically transferred into the com.tom IIoT portal, which provides a huge variety of functions for creation of dashboards, trend graphs and alarms.
https://www.com-tom.de/download/other/fair-offer-starterkit_v1.pdf
Industrial IoT Platforms
Siemens Mindsphere
Siemens had an entire hall to itself and was impressive. I was more focused to understand the offerings from its Mindsphere platform. Interestingly, they don’t call themselves an IoT platform, but an Open IoT Operating System.
Here’s how their offerings value chain looks like with a wide array of partners and customers:
This board reflected the customer base of Siemens Mindsphere:
If you pay attention, my parent company TRUMPF is also one of their customers.
Software AG/Cumulocity
Pepperl + Fuchs, Software AG and Dell were showing a joint showcase in the fair. Software AG was also demoing their latest acquisition, Trendminer, a self-service analytics solution.
Summary
I provide a very limited perspective of the fair given the constraints of time and exposure I had. But there is no denying the fact that SPS IPC Drives is definitely the place to be to gauge and stay abreast with the latest industrial trends.
My maiden visit injected in me enough curiosity to delve deeper into the different aspects of this industry and present a more confident self in 2019. By the way, in 2019 the name SPS IPC Drives will rechristened into Smart Production Solutions (SPS).
