The CIP safety protocol in connecting single machines to create production lines

When designing single machines, manufacturers are usually aware of relevant restrictions prescribed by legislation and safety requirements, but they do not assume that the given machines will be used as individual components in a production line. End users are then made to face the serious problem of how to build a complete production line consisting of such machines, satisfying the requirements of Performance Level or SIL in multiple branches of machinery. The paper describes a hardwired solution and compares it with the approach based on a current trend in automation, namely, communication control over the Ethernet or via the CIP-Safety protocol, in which all the machines involved can communicate very effectively. Such a procedure is capable of satisfying not only the hardware reliability requirements but also the demands of end users, who seek to achieve a productivity rate as high as possible.