On the rise

Even after more than 30 years since the found­ing of Profibus & Profinet Inter­na­tion­al (PI), its tech­nol­o­gy is still very well received in the mar­ket. “To us, this is the ulti­mate proof that we’ve made a series of right deci­sions regard­ing the devel­op­ment of our tech­nolo­gies in the past,” said Karsten Schnei­der – chair­man of both the Profibus Nutze­ror­gan­i­sa­tion and PI – of the lat­est node counts.

In the case of both Profinet and IO-Link, the work­ing group experts have not only con­tin­ued devel­op­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tion aspects of the tech­nol­o­gy, but have also pro­vid­ed cru­cial addi­tion­al sup­port to make them suit­able for use in Indus­try 4.0‑compliant pro­duc­tion. One exam­ple of this is the two com­pan­ion spec­i­fi­ca­tions, in which OPC UA-com­pat­i­ble infor­ma­tion mod­els for Profinet and IO-Link are described.

IO-Link saw its largest annu­al increase (40 %) in 2019, achiev­ing the same growth rate as the year before. This shows that IO-Link is estab­lish­ing itself in the mar­ket for the long term. The total num­ber of installed IO-Link devices is now more than 16 million.

With 6.4 mil­lion new devices installed in the mar­ket in 2019, Profinet saw its largest annu­al increase so far. This cor­re­sponds to a growth rate of 25 % and con­tributes to the total node count of 32.4 mil­lion. “Profinet rep­re­sents reli­able and sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy which already meets require­ments from an Indus­try 4.0 per­spec­tive very well today. To ensure that this remains the case for the long term, our experts – increas­ing­ly in coop­er­a­tion with experts at oth­er orga­ni­za­tions as well – are con­tin­u­ous­ly work­ing on firm­ly anchor­ing Profinet as an enabler for dig­i­ti­za­tion in pro­duc­tion,” con­tin­ued Karsten Schnei­der. This is also being impres­sive­ly demon­strat­ed by the results of oth­er mar­ket stud­ies, like the one by IHS Mark­it where Profinet was deter­mined to be the most wide­ly used Eth­er­net-based sys­tem in the world with a share of 29 %.

With its increase of 2.5 mil­lion nodes in 2019, the num­ber of new Profisafe nodes installed has now exceed­ed the 2 mil­lion mark two years in a row. The total num­ber of Profisafe nodes installed now lies close to 14 million.

Despite its long mar­ket pres­ence, Profibus has also man­aged to once again report an impres­sive num­ber of new nodes – 1.9 mil­lion – in 2019. By the end of 2019, more than 62 mil­lion Profibus devices were installed in indus­tri­al plants world­wide, with over 13 mil­lion of them being incor­po­rat­ed into process-engi­neer­ing plants.

“Moti­vat­ed by this mar­ket suc­cess, our mem­bers around the globe are strong­ly com­mit­ted to con­tin­ued devel­op­ment and many dif­fer­ent mar­ket­ing projects,” accord­ing to Schnei­der. In this con­text, we can hope that the con­straints caused by the virus don’t last long and that peo­ple will quick­ly be able to get back to nor­mal in both the busi­ness and pri­vate spheres.