Manufacturers often turn to workarounds, using wireless protocols for monitoring and wired solutions for motion control. However, this does not solve the problem for machines with fast-moving parts..."
Industry 4.0 isn’t a vision for the future—it’s the reality of the present. The global market today is driven by hyper-growth, rapid innovation, and mass customization, and the only way for manufacturers to stay afloat is by adopting Industry 4.0 pillars like big data, smart analytics, and automation. That’s why cyber-physical systems (CPS), industrial internet of things (IIoT), cloud computing, cognitive computing, and artificial intelligence are quickly becoming essential tools in any manufacturing endeavor.
Let’s talk about communication
Those tools all depend on rapid, reliable, real-time communication. Wired communication does an excellent job in many industrial settings, providing highly reliable connectivity for both monitoring and control of legacy static machinery. But when it comes to mobile equipment and machines with fast-moving or rotating parts, wiring is not practical. Standard wireless protocols like Wi-Fi, Zigbee, and Bluetooth also aren’t the answer. Although those wireless protocols have revolutionized IT, they don’t meet industrial factory automation standards for reliability, latency, and scalability.
As a result, manufacturers often turn to workarounds, using wireless protocols for monitoring and wired solutions for motion control. However, this does not solve the problem for machines with fast-moving parts. Furthermore, the systems are siloed, with no uniform solution for both control and monitoring. These solutions simply don’t have the capacity to support industrial technology holistically as it continues to evolve and advance.
The missing link for i4.0 transformation
IO-Link Wireless was created as a response to these challenges. It is structured as an industry 4.0 building block, providing a global wireless communication standard designed to replace cables in both remote sensor/actuator control and monitoring, even in harsh industrial conditions.
Based on the IO-Link IEC 61131-9 standard, IO-Link Wireless is a system extension of IO-Link-based technology. Like the classic IO-Link protocol, IO-Link Wireless technology offers high reliability, low latency, scalability, deterministic communication, high client-density capacity, and robustness, all in a wireless format. It enables access at the lowest level of automation—the machine—with seamless, vendor-agnostic, cable-free communication, and a single wireless communication protocol for both control and monitoring.
IO-Link Wireless is uniquely suited to meet the demands of Industry 4.0 and is already being implemented by some of the world’s largest automation equipment manufacturers and machine builders.
For example, we’re currently working with Cloostermans-Huwaert, a leading machine builder in Belgium. Manu Peelman, a process engineer with the company sums it up: “IO-Link Wireless proved to be the only wireless protocol capable of addressing the extreme performance and reliability requirements of high-speed machinery… It enables full flexibility along with a quick and easy upgrade of existing machines into wireless, gaining new capabilities, data collection, and insights”.
He’s not the only one telling me this.
I encourage you to download our IO-Link Wireless Whitepaper to learn more about IO-Link Wireless and the benefits it offers manufacturers.
Eran Zigman is CoreTigo’s CEO. Eran founded CoreTigo with the vision of untethering Industrial machines from the burden of wires. Eran is a veteran in communication and silicon technology with over 10 years of management and engineering experience at Texas Instruments. In his last role, Eran was responsible for a dozen million revenue wireless product line. In this role, Eran led all corporate aspects of the business including operations, customer services, technology infrastructure, marketing, and business, which grew by ~400% over a period of a few years.
