Rocky road to the industrial highway

The market for industrial Ethernet products and technologies is set to grow rapidly over the next few years. Analysts estimates for growth typically range between 20-30% per annum, but a number of challenges lie ahead - not least from existing fieldbus technologies.

Independent market analyst IMS puts the compound annual growth rate for industrial Ethernet at a relatively conservative 21.7%, worldwide - with the power and utilities industries to the fore in driving the market. Asia, it said, offers the main platform for increasing adoption of Ethernet in the chemicals and other process industries, in-line with the shift in the balance of industrial production to that region

The total size of the Ethernet installed base is on track to reach around 40 million nodes worldwide by the end of 2011 - an approximate four-fold increase on its 2006 level.

Meanwhile, the total number of new Ethernet nodes installed in industry worldwide is predicted to reach 8.8 million during 2011, compared with 3.3 million for 2006. Each node typically represents an automation end-device - structural components such as switches, hubs and routers - with an Ethernet interface.

Ethernet TCP/IP is likely to remain the most common form of Ethernet used in industry over the next five years, at least. According to IMS senior analyst John Morse, this forecast in part reflects increasing "faith" in industrial variants of Ethernet, as specifications become more established, as well as greater availability of industrial quality products that are compatible with newer technologies.

"The important point here is that even by the end of 2011 and despite the rapid growth in the use of Ethernet in industry, Ethernet TCP/IP is estimated to still account for over half the total number of Ethernet nodes installed," said Morse. This, he added, reflects the rapid development and availability of the switch devices that enable systems designers to create networks that meet their requirements while using Ethernet TCP/IP.

Most industrial PCs are currently Ethernet-enabled, with the percentage figure set to approach 70% by 2011. However, the proportion of Ethernet-enabled PLC hardware, operator terminals, I/O controllers and variable speed drives will remain low due to the relatively long design cycle for industrial automation products.

Overall though, Morse comments that the performance of the industrial Ethernet is not significantly better than that of industrial networking generally - especially given the sizes of the respective installed bases.

Morse does expect Ethernet to make significant in-roads in the fieldbus market, but said this is not going to happen overnight. "Ethernet is experiencing extremely good growth in industrial automation terms, but it won't completely knock the fieldbus market out by any means," he said.

"Ethernet, like a lot of things, is fine but for a lot of people it is more than they need. Some of the fieldbus technologies are extremely easy to use and when we talk to users they say things like 'well why should I bother with Ethernet when I am using Profibus?'"

Indeed, the Profibus organisation has reported a surprising increase in the sales of Profibus following the introduction of its Ethernet variant Profinet (see panel). "I think it is because people see the migration to Profinet much easier through Profibus, which in general is making networking a more common thing to do," suggested Morse.

"Often the first step into networking, particularly for an organisation that has not been doing any in the past, is to go for fieldbus as in many cases it is a lot less complex. Networking is not rocket science, but it is a question of getting your foot on the ladder," said Morse.

"We mustn't forget that there are still lots of people that like to connect things up with pieces of wire," the analyst continued. "As they become wiser they see the advantages of networking in general. Also, the publicity surrounding industrial Ethernet has encouraged people to look into networking."



The move to industrial Ethernet is part of a massive change in the infrastructural components of the process architecture, believes Dermot Coady, marketing director of MTL Instruments. This, he said, is being driven by customer needs and translates in to more bandwidth being required across the process plant.

"At the heart of this is the need to provide more diagnostic information on both the process and the devices as a means of moving more data from the field to the execution system," said Coady.

"As a result we'll see an information highway within the plant that will be based on a number of different communication media and standards, such as wireless, industrial Ethernet, all of which may need to be integrated with the traditional signal level of 4-20mA."

IMS' Morse sees the market for industrial Ethernet as developing along the same lines that fieldbus did some years ago, with the US favouring Ethernet/IP, which is supported largely by Rockwell Automation, and Germany favouring Profinet, which is supported by Siemens. Most other industrial Ethernet variants are more application-orientated and so have a more international appeal.

"The market in Asia is currently dominated by the economic and industrial growth in China and is later into the market for industrial Ethernet. In addition there is no one dominant supplier and so is far more open in attitude to the technologies that are adopted," noted Morse.

Meanwhile, IMS expects to see some significant consolidation among suppliers to the industrial Ethernet market within the coming five years, with the supplier base also becoming far more international in its mix. One driver here is likely to be price erosion - currently estimated at 1-2% - in the face of increased competition, particularly from Far East manufacturers.

Top 12 IE component suppliers (alphabetical order)


- Advantech 

- Beckhoff 

- Digi International

- GarrettCom

- Hirschmann n Korenix 

- Moxa Technologies 

- Phoenix Contact 

- RuggedCom 

- Schneider Electric 

- Siemens 

- Sixnet

Morse sums up the supplier base as "a few are large international automation suppliers, others are specialist industrial networking companies, and there are also those companies where industrial Ethernet components are included in a broader range of products. The size of the supplier companies also varies a great deal from large international organisation to many small companies, often providing specialist products to niche markets."

A major driver for growth in the market has been the arrival of versions of Ethernet that overcame the determinism problems. In most cases this involved replacing or modifying the "TCP/IP" part of Ethernet with technology specifically designed to meet industry's requirements.

Determinism was "the big bogeyman" a few years ago, but is now far less often cited as being a problem, particularly in process control applications, said Morse. "With the use of switches and careful design of the network, you can effectively eliminate the determinism problem. It is an on-going process, but things are improving all the time." There are still, however, concerns about using Ethernet in safety applications, especially where there is machinery involved, said Morse. "If you are going to hit an emergency stop you don't want to wait for a space on the network for a message to get through, especially if the circular saw is pointing at your head," he commented.

Likewise, Coady of MTL believes the lack of a solution for hazardous areas has been a barrier to the adoption of industrial Ethernet at the field level. However, following the introduction of a number of intrinsic safety technologies this obstacle has been removed and, therefore, users should begin to see a range of field devices making use of the increased bandwidth.



Profinet's 3m forecast for 2010


PROFIBUS estimates there were around 1.14 million PROFINET nodes installed by the end of 2007 compared with 23.3 million PROFIBUS nodes. And, forecasts PI deputy chairman Joerg Freitag, "Three million PROFINET nodes will have been installed by the end of 2010. This corresponds to an average annual increase of 37%."

Last year also saw the number of PROFIBUS nodes purchased grow to a new all-time high of 4.5 million. This meant that 23.3 million PROFIBUS nodes had been installed by the end of 2007.

Meanwhile, the number of PROFIBUS PA devices increased by 120,000 to 750,000 in 2007.

The total number of PROFIBUS nodes installed in the process industry amounts now to four million, which corresponds to an additional 700,000 nodes last year.