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ifm01171Even sensors have to become more and more communicative in the 4.0 development industry. Seamless communication from the field level to the control, management and plant management level up to the company level should be possible. IFM Electronic has with the "Y Communications"Created a direct path of the sensor data, bypassing the control plane. This provides data to the PLC and at the same time directly to the enterprise management level.

As a rule, a PLC, for example, processes the data from the connected sensors in a production machine; however, it is usually not possible to forward this data to the management level. If you want to implement such a forwarding, the PLC program must be changed. To avoid this, data from sensors that have an IO-Link interface can be passed on directly to higher-level systems.

ifm20117This requires a tool such as the Recorder Framework, which can handle multiple data sources and work with all common protocols. The system consists of several software modules with which a consistent communication can be realized. For example, the agent connectivity port renderer is a software gateway that allows bidirectional communication between a large number of different interfaces. This enables communication between SAP systems and the data of the devices from the field, control and management levels.

Many sensor information needed for predictive maintenance or energy consumption measurement is unnecessary for the control tasks in the machine and therefore not available in the PLC. For this reason, the automatizer has opened a second communication path. This direct way of sensor data bypassing the control plane is referred to by the manufacturer as Y-communication, since the data passes once to the PLC as in the two arms of the letter Y and on the other side directly into the enterprise management level.

In the software framework is with the Recorder Smartobserver It also includes a visualization system that allows the user to easily monitor the condition of machinery and equipment. The visualization of the Smartobserver can be easily adapted to the user's wishes.

The renderer framework makes many applications possible where sensor data is important. A typical example is the condition-based maintenance of machines. Sensors detect vibrations that announce the wear of a bearing inside the machine. Based on the sensor data, the replacement of the warehouse can be planned in good time.

Another example is the monitoring of compressed air systems. Sensors that measure compressed air consumption are already present in many machines to ensure operation. The data from these sensors can be used to detect and correct compressed air leaks. However, this only works if the sensor data is available on a higher-level system, which is easily possible with communication via the Y-path and the Linerecorder framework.
