Exhibitors at the Hanover Fair expressed cautious optimism about a recovery in automation markets despite economic challenges. Several suppliers showed innovative real-time Ethernet products that proved it is ready for factory floors. Real-time Ethernet and motion control dominated the event. Solutions from Profibus, EtherNet/IP, EtherCAT, and others aim to provide sub-millisecond cycle times for hundreds of axes on Ethernet networks. Major suppliers like Cisco and Phoenix Contact also exhibited new industrial Ethernet infrastructure products.

1. THOUGHT LEADERS FOR MANUFACTURING & SUPPLY CHAIN
ARC INSIGHTS
By David W. Humphrey
INSIGHT# 2003-17MD&H
APRIL 16, 2003
Exhibitors at last week’s Hanover Fair
expressed cautious optimism despite the
deep economic slump in the automation
markets. The event also featured
surprisingly innovative real-time Ethernet
products - finally proving that it’s ready to
conquer the factory floor.
Cautious Optimism Pervades Hanover Fair
Keywords
Hanover Fair, Factory Automation, Real-time Ethernet, Motion Control
Summary
With the war in Iraq, stumbling European economies and a mysterious flu-
like epidemic from Asia, the Hanover Fair opened its gates last week with
three strikes against it. But despite the subdued
atmosphere, exhibitors expressed cautious op-
timism about signs of a recovery in automation
markets. This year a number of automation
suppliers showed surprisingly innovative prod-
ucts centered on real-time Ethernet, which
finally proved that it’s ready to conquer the fac-
tory floor.
Analysis
The Hanover Fair, the largest industrial trade fair in the world, is really an
umbrella event for eight related trade fairs of which factory automation is
the centerpiece. While Hanover has long been THE major event for auto-
mation, pressures within the industry are forcing the show organizers to
change the format to please an increasingly dissatisfied target audience of
exhibitors and visitors. In Europe, where trade fairs still thrive, more and
more exhibitors have written off Hanover as an expensive “image” show in
favor of more focused, regional shows like the November SPS/IPC/Drives
fair in Nuremberg.
Late last year, the organization representing robotics and machine vision
suppliers made the decision to pull out of Hanover completely and start a
new fair for robotics and automation. Robotics, machine vision, assembly
and handling systems are the focus of this new every two-year fair, which
debuts in June 2004 with the working name “Automatic.”
Recognizing the industry’s desire to move to a two year format to better
mesh with the innovation cycle, the Hanover Fair organizers have also de-
cided to reinvent the show as a forum for both discrete and process

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The Hanover Fair plans to add a
process automation focus on an
alternating-year basis to the
traditionally discrete-oriented show.
automation. As of 2005, the factory automation focus will move to an odd-
year cycle alternating with a new process automation focus – previously
not part of Hanover’s repertoire. However, this decision places the fair
squarely in a competing position with the well-
established INTERKAMA show in Düsseldorf, which
is now also on an even year cycle. How many large-
scale process shows does Germany need in the same
year? ARC believes visitors and exhibitors will vote
with their wallets.
Cautious Optimism Pervades
The 18 percent drop in attendance this year was attributed primarily to un-
certainty caused by the war in Iraq and the resulting economic lull.
Attendance by Asian visitors was hit especially hard by the current SARS
threat. The number of exhibitors was down by less than 4 percent, includ-
ing the 40-odd robotics and vision suppliers previously mentioned.
Roughly half of the suppliers informally surveyed by ARC reported better
than expected results in Q1 – resulting in a mood of cautious optimism for
the next few quarters. Many attributed this short-term success to invest-
ments that were delayed last year, but not canceled entirely. Automation
suppliers in general are optimistic that the long-awaited recovery might
still occur in 2003 despite last week’s cut in the European Union’s growth
forecast from 1.8 percent to a dismal 1 percent.
Ethernet and Motion Control Were the Hot Topics
Two topics clearly dominated the factory automation halls at Hanover this
year: real-time Ethernet and its application potential in motion control.
While industrial network organizations announced plans for switched
Ethernet solutions, many traditional component suppliers showed whole
new product lines of Ethernet infrastructure products.
Real-time Industrial Ethernet Comes of Age
Just two weeks before the show, Profibus International (PI) announced
plans and expected performance data for Profinet V3. With the aid of an
embedded switch chip currently under development by Siemens, this new
flavor of Profinet will use an iso-synchronous real-time (IRT) channel to
synchronize critical data while still maintaining normal TCP/IP communi-

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cation in its full form. PI expects V3-capable products to be available in
2005.
Profibus International is clearly setting its sights on motion control – argua-
bly the most demanding application in automation for networked
solutions. The “Profidrive” application profile will also be used for Profinet
motion applications. The organization claims a repeatable cycle time for
Profinet V3 of 1 ms with a jitter of less than 1 µs for up to 150 axes, and a
cycle time as short as 250 µs with “just” 30 axes. While these are respect-
able cycle times, they are not unknown to users of SER-
COS, which also achieves sub-millisecond cycle times.
The difference here will be Profinet’s higher node ca-
pacity compared with SERCOS in its present form. PI
underscores the growing need for greater node capacity
in newspaper and magazine printing machines as well
as third generation (3G) packaging machines, which are
being redesigned with more and more servo axes in
place of mechanical linkages.
Not to be outdone, ODVA used the occasion of the Hanover Fair to an-
nounce its own real-time solution for EtherNet/IP. Dubbed “CIPsync”, this
solution adds time synchronization services to the network’s existing
Common Industrial Protocol (CIP). CIPsync is based on the new IEEE 1588
standard “Precision Clock Synchronization Protocol for Networked Meas-
urement and Control Systems”, which is designed for local area networks
that support multicast messaging. According to ODVA, lab testing has
shown that a time synchronization accuracy of less than 0.5 µs is possible.
The CIP specification enhancements are expected to be completed in 2003,
with products likely to appear in the following year.
Last but not least, Beckhoff Industrie Elektronik demonstrated its own solu-
tion for harnessing the power of Ethernet for high-speed machine I/O
known as EtherCAT. According to Beckhoff, Ethernet wasn’t conceptual-
ized for the factor floor, and its minimum frame size of 48 bytes is
inefficient for handling small-data nodes like I/O terminal blocks. The Eth-
erCAT approach allows up to 4 gigabytes of I/O data to be mapped in
packets from 2 bits to 64 kBytes directly into Ethernet frames, which are
they passed back to the network via an IP-bus coupler. With this innova-
tion method, Beckhoff claims update times of 30 µs for 1000 I/O and 100 µs
Cisco Systems Is Entering the Industrial
Market with the Launch of Its First
Switch Designed for Harsh Environments

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for 100 servo axes. A full line of EtherCAT products was announced at the
show and is expected to be available at the end of 2003.
Ethernet Infrastructure Goes Factory Automation
The lack of industrial hardened infrastructure components and industry
standards has hindered the acceptance of Ethernet at the device level. This
deficit is being addressed not only by industrial component suppliers like
Phoenix Contact, HMS, Hilscher and Hirschmann, but also by the office IT
giant Cisco Systems, whose first “Catalyst 2955” Ethernet switch for the
factor floor was displayed at the booth of partner Rockwell Automation.
Cisco, with about 70 percent of the total worldwide switch market, is now
setting its sights on the manufacturing world, focusing
not just on switch hardware but also on the related ser-
vices such as security, availability and Quality of Service
– new vocabulary to manufacturers.
Phoenix Contact exhibited its new Modular Managed
Switch as part of its Factory Line. This new DIN-rail
mountable switch looks more like a remote I/O block
with expansion slots for plug-in “media modules”, al-
lowing the user to mix and match ports of different
media, including twisted pair and fiber optic, up to 24
ports.
Recommendations
• All doubts about Ethernet’s future role in the factory were swept away
at this year’s Hanover Fair. As industrial Ethernet becomes more at-
tractive, users need to review their controls strategies to determine
whether a migration makes sense.
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information, contact your account manager or the author at
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ARC Insights are published and copyrighted by ARC Advisory Group. The infor-
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permission from ARC.
Component Suppliers Exhibited
Innovative Products for Industrial
Ethernet Like Phoenix Contact's
New Modular Managed Switch