Industry associations to develop single conformance test plan for the IEC/IEEE 60802 TSN profile

Industry associations Avnu Alliance, CC-Link Partner Association, ODVA, OPC Foundation and PROFIBUS & PROFINET International (PI) are collaborating to develop a single conformance test plan for the IEEE/IEC 60802 Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) profile for industrial automation.

The test plan will be used as a base test by all the participating organizations and made available to the broader Industrial Automation ecosystem.

“OPC UA is a secure, vendor-independent communication solution that fully scales from the field to the cloud and offers semantic interoperability. Other underlying IT infrastructure such as Ethernet TSN and the IEC/IEEE 60802 TSN Profile for Industrial Automation open up further applications for the market. We believe this conformance collaboration is an important contribution to preparing and delivering streamlined and effective conformance testing and certification to the industry in collaboration with other SDOs,” said Stefan Hoppe, president and executive director of the OPC Foundation.

A statement released by the OPC Foundation explains that this collaboration will help in building end user confidence. Through this, 60802 conformant devices from different manufacturers which support different automation protocols will coexist reliably at the TSN level on shared networks. This includes devices using TSN for applications other than automation.

“Avnu’s purpose and mission is to transform standard networks to enable support for many time sensitive applications and protocols in an open, interoperable manner. This collaboration among organizations will be critically important to facilitating coexistence of multiple workloads and protocols according to IEEE 60802 on a network, while leveraging foundational network interoperability that is used across industries,” said Greg Schlechter, Avnu Alliance president. “We are committed to working with the industries to enable an interoperable ecosystem of devices that allow end users to confidently deploy on open, standard, and converged networks.”

The associations are focussed on developing a jointly agreed and owned test plan for the industrial automation market.

“EtherNet/IP users will be able to take advantage of the benefits afforded by 60802 TSN of enhanced network performance, higher utilization, and guaranteed network access for multiple time-critical applications with different priorities. ODVA’s participation in TIACC will ensure that the full potential of 60802 TSN coexistence is realized by end-users to help make Industry 4.0 and IIoT a reality,” said Dr. Al Beydoun, president and executive director at ODVA.

This formal collaboration will create a structure in which all these organizations can work together and exchange ideas towards the end goal of interoperability and coexistence on open, standard networks for all protocols, without needing to establish a separate, formal organization. For convenience, the collaboration activities will be referred to as “TIACC” (TSN Industrial Automation Conformance Collaboration).

“The creation of the connected industries of the future requires different systems and devices to communicate in order to deliver the necessary process transparency required. This is a core principle for the CLPA and is at the root of why the organization was founded. This is why we are delighted to be part of the TIACC and look forward to supporting the creation of a unified, common test plan for TSN-compatible products. By doing so, we can help further boost the adoption of futureproof technologies for smart manufacturing,” said Manabu Hamaguchi, global director at CLPA.

By being a part of TIACC, the associations show their commitment to develop an interoperable ecosystem of devices from different manufacturers to comply with the IEC/IEEE Standards Association 60802 profile. This will enable end-users to confidently deploy these devices on open, standard networks. The goal of the collaboration is to have the final version of the single, shared test plan available soon after the IEC/IEEE 60802 profile is published.

“At PI we are taking conformance testing very seriously. It’s our belief, that thought-out testing ensures cross-vendor interoperability. That’s why we invested huge efforts in our test system in recent years. With this joint initiative, we are taking the next step towards converged networks utilizing TSN, giving our users the confidence in the future-readiness of PROFINET. This collaboration is a huge milestone on the way of the digital transformation,” said Karsten Schneider, chairperson of PI.