ODVA, an international association comprised of members from automation companies around the world, announced that vehicle manufacturer General Motors Corp. (GM) has standardized on EtherNet/IP for its vehicle manufacturing operations. The EtherNet/IP network will provide real-time communication between GM machine controllers, robots, and process control equipment, as well as provide information to high-level business systems.
The move means that suppliers to more than 60 GM factories located in Africa, Europe, Latin America, North America, and the Middle East will have until Jan. 1, 2007 to make their products EtherNet/IP-compatible.
"To meet our needs, we wanted an Ethernet implementation that is open, readily available, capable of real-time data delivery, and uses standard infrastructure devices," said Gary Workman, staff development engineer at GM. "The EtherNet/IP networking solution clearly meets all of these criteria."
Introduced in early 2000, EtherNet/IP is based on commercial off-the-shelf Ethernet (IEEE 802.3) and the TCP/IP suite – not modified, proprietary implementations. EtherNet/IP also leverages standard User Datagram Protocol/Internet Protocol (UDP/IP, part of the TCP/IP suite) transport services, which provides high performance and multicast functionality for real-time messaging. Because it leverages both TCP/IP and UDP/IP protocols, GM and other manufacturers can use EtherNet/IP for both information and control applications.
EtherNet/IP also provides the advantage of seamlessly integrating with DeviceNet, GM's preferred device-level network in North America. GM standardized on the networks to achieve a high level of consistency in designing and operating its assembly plants, regardless of the brand of products used.
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