Sercos logs international growth in 2014

The company’s membership increased by approximately 30 percent last year.

Sercos International—the supplier of the Sercos automation bus—grew its membership by approximately 30 percent in 2014. Significant growth for the organization occurred in Asia, while the addition of Schubert System Elektronik, Germany; Texas Instruments Deutschland GmbH; and Laumas Elettronica S.r.l. in Italy bolstered its membership in Europe.

“We see a significant growth of interest in our technology in Asia,” says Peter Lutz, managing director of Sercos International. “Therefore, we organized four seminars and various workshops in China in the first quarter of 2015 alone, which were very well attended.”

Japanese companies such as Denso-Wave and Exluce joined Sercos, as well as numerous companies and organizations from the Chinese machinery and technology industries. Hangzhou Kaierda Robot Technology Co., State Nuclear Automation, Tsino Dynatron Electric Technology (Beijing) Co. and Zhejiang Rigao Machinery Corp. are some that joined the user organization in 2014.

According to Sercos, Schubert System Elektronik GmbH uses Sercos technology primarily in automation. In this application, the bus allows for allows for communication between distributed, decentralized real-time controls, e.g., in packaging machines. Sercos says though previous busses needed to communicate the data for real-time nodes, the new Sercos architecture provides an Ethernet-based bus “bundled in one system” for all automation solutions.

“Our membership in Sercos International is partially motivated by the chance to actively contribute to new features in the specifications, thus being able to participate in technical innovations,” says Tobias Schlier, business unit manager at Schubert.

“The Sercos III slave is a certified solution on the Sitara AM335x from Texas Instruments [TI] and is part of the multi-protocol Industrial Ethernet requirements from our leading industrial automation customers,” adds Thomas Mauer, system engineer, factory automation and control, WW industrial systems team at Texas Instruments.

Sercos International is an association of users and manufacturers in charge of technical development, standardization, certification and marketing for the Sercos automation bus.

KEYWORDS: PLCs

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Jeremy Gerrard was Food Engineering's Digital/Online Editor. He is a graduate of Auburn University with a degree in journalism. His previous work experience includes years spent as a reporter with the Daily Local News out of Chester County, PA. In addition to writing feature articles for Food Engineering, Jeremy covered the Dry Processing, Field Reports and People and Industry news sections.