Progress in the digitization of process plants

Demand for the IO-Link com­mu­ni­ca­tion stan­dard has grown strong­ly, espe­cial­ly in the food indus­try. The field­bus-inde­pen­dent tech­nol­o­gy for point-to-point com­mu­ni­ca­tion impress­es with its ease of use and enables the cost-effec­tive dig­i­ti­za­tion of plants. As a lead­ing equip­ment sup­pli­er in the indus­try, Endress+Hauser pro­vides a broad IO-Link offer­ing for a wide range of process parameters.

IO-Link is regard­ed as an estab­lished stan­dard for mea­sur­ing devices with basic func­tion­al­i­ty, there­by offer­ing advan­tages such as data trans­paren­cy and addi­tion­al con­trol through dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy. Sup­pli­ers of machines or entire process units (skids) for the food indus­try in par­tic­u­lar tend to inte­grate IO-Link-capa­ble sen­sors and actu­a­tors. Espe­cial­ly for aux­il­iary cir­cuits, mea­sur­ing devices with basic func­tion­al­i­ty are well suit­ed; devices with addi­tion­al func­tions would unnec­es­sar­i­ly increase com­plex­i­ty and costs.

Broad range for the food industry

The group is con­sid­ered one of the mar­ket lead­ers in process mea­sure­ment tech­nol­o­gy for the food indus­try. “No oth­er man­u­fac­tur­er offers this breadth and depth of prod­ucts and ser­vices. Endress+Hauser’s com­pre­hen­sive IO-Link port­fo­lio illus­trates this posi­tion. We sup­port cus­tomers as a strong part­ner for process automa­tion with IO-Link sen­sors in numer­ous appli­ca­tions and fields of use,” says Rob Sips, strate­gic account man­ag­er for the group’s inter­na­tion­al business.

Analog signals and digital communication

A major­i­ty of IO-Link sen­sors can option­al­ly be oper­at­ed in ana­log mode (4…20 mA) by sim­ply chang­ing the device con­fig­u­ra­tion. This means that work­flows in pro­duc­tion can ini­tial­ly remain in place. If addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion such as diag­nos­tic and ser­vice data is required in addi­tion to the actu­al process para­me­ter, an installed IO-Link-capa­ble device can then sim­ply be con­vert­ed to a dig­i­tal signal.

Easy entry into Industry 4.0

“IO-Link is not the most pow­er­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion stan­dard for process engi­neer­ing. But the tech­nol­o­gy is cost-effec­tive and holds great poten­tial for dig­i­tiz­ing process plants.”

- Oliv­er Hansert

The devices with IO-Link inter­face sup­port acyclic trans­mis­sion of help­ful meta­da­ta for sta­ble and effi­cient pro­duc­tion. In addi­tion, the Smart Sen­sor Pro­file is imple­ment­ed for easy engi­neer­ing. This reduces the effort for plant oper­a­tors when inte­grat­ing sen­sors into the system.

Portfolio further expanded

The com­pa­ny offers an exten­sive prod­uct port­fo­lio of IO-Link-enabled devices for all rel­e­vant process para­me­ters. Just recent­ly, the com­pa­ny intro­duced the com­pact Smartec CLD18 con­duc­tiv­i­ty sen­sor, IO-Link ver­sions of the PMP51, PMP55 and PMC51 pres­sure gauges, and the lev­el gauge. With these new addi­tions to the prod­uct range, cus­tomers can take advan­tage of dig­i­ti­za­tion in a cost-effi­cient way.