Architectural Concept of Virtual Automation Networks

Twenty years ago, fieldbus systems have been developed for the factory floor and are widely introduced in industrial automation installations in the meantime. In the nineties Ethernet-based technologies have been successfully introduced to office automation followed by the usage of Internetbased applications. Today industrial automation is getting penetrated by the same IT technologies used in office automation. Nevertheless, the factory floor, respectively automation science and practice, has special requirements that clearly differ from IT-world requirements; this especially concerns safety, security, real-time, wireless and public network integration aspects. Thus – to make information technologies applicable in all fields of production industries – these technologies have to be adopted, extended or even modified. This significant challenge is extensively tackled by the European Integrated Project “Virtual Automation Networks”. The exchange of the industrial automation network base towards IT technologies also offers the unique change to build an open network platform providing easy integration and extendibility capabilities. This paper presents the open system architecture and first implementation steps for realizing a Virtual Automation Network. The concepts aimed at are characterized by modularity and intelligence, thus, enabling flexibility and re-configurability focusing on future knowledge-based and agile manufacturing enterprises. Copyright © 2008 IFAC.