PROFINET Manual
A modern distributed automation system must meet a wide variety of requirements. In the table 1 a first overview.
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Management This network is used to coordinate the individual production cells and control production and record operating data. |
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Engineering This network is used for commissioning, diagnostics and maintenance of an installation via a data connection (remote). |
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Control This network is used to control and coordinate the functions and tasks between the individual controllers in a production cell. |
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Functional safety With this network, all measures for the protection of persons and resources are coordinated and ensured. |
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Real-time This network is used to synchronize movements and other time-critical tasks. |
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Fieldbus Individual sensors and actuators are provided with the appropriate protection if required and addressed with field buses such as PROFIBUS. |
Table 1: Various requirements in automation
In many practical applications, special networks are used for these different requirements (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Different networks for the coordination of functions
These various networks have often grown historically and were certainly an optimal solution at the time of their commissioning. During operation, such structures as shown in the picture 3 cause inflexible and expensive to maintain automation structure.
Figure 3: Practical example
The goal now is to combine all these different systems into a single, functionally comprehensive network. PROFINET is such a system:
Figure 4: One network for all requirements
In practical realization, however, different segments of this common technology still have different properties, adapted to the necessary requirements. As shown in Figure 5, all this can be combined.
Figure 5: PROFINET IO meets all requirements
