The intercommunication of sercos and CIP-based protocols for safety systems will benefit users and suppliers of automation that is used in potentially explosive applications.

The intercommunication of sercos and CIP-based protocols for safety systems will benefit users and suppliers of automation that is used in potentially explosive applications

sercos international announced plans to continue and intensify its cooperation with ODVA (Open DeviceNet Vendors Association), which began in November 2006. With the objective of advancing common interests and topics, sercos will be involved as an active partner organization within the new ODVA machine initiative. A key focus of the cooperation is the worldwide marketing and expansion of CIP Safety, which is currently used as a bus-independent safety protocol for DeviceNet, EtherNet/IP and sercos. CIP is an acronym for common industrial protocol and is common to Rockwell Automation system platforms and systems from other suppliers.

“CIP Safety on sercos is an excellent example of how technologies from different organizations can successfully complement each other-to benefit manufacturers as well as users. Together with ODVA, we would like to discover similar synergies in other areas,” says Peter Lutz, managing director of sercos international.

Technological convergence is an important factor in achieving enhanced continuity and optimum compatibility. sercos international sees potential in areas such as control networking, connections to MES/ERP systems and the use of common profiles, especially in networked machines and systems. sercos’ open and manufacturer-independent architecture enables integration with other technologies or the coexistence with internal technologies without any negative impact on the performance and real-time properties of the bus interface, as was clearly demonstrated in the use of CIP Safety.