With Industrie 4.0 and the digital transformation, a flood of data is available in the production. But as of today, 90% of this data is not used.

• Why is this so and how can this be changed?
• What is the role of PROFINET, OPC UA or TSN in this transformation?
• Which way in industrial communication is now future proof?
• And how can data be turned into structured and useful information?

It’s imperative that we understand and co-determine the entire scope of different topics in the field of industrial communication. Communication from sensor to cloud is possible today already, with IO-Link as a widely spread sensor level protocol and PROFINET as the Industrial Ethernet backbone. Using OPC UA as interface to IT applications, many standards are ready to be used.  

When the Industrie 4.0 project was started with lots of dedicated companies, its many different dimensions quickly became clear. On the one hand, PI must tackle the entire spectrum of industrial communication technology, but timely implementation can only occur in agile measures based on existing technology. Due to the sheer size of this spectrum, this can only be done in close cooperation with other organizations.

Lots of progress has already been made and more highlights of the usage of PROFINET in Industrie 4.0 applications will follow. PI has set itself the target to make Industrie 4.0 reality and easily usable in practice.