IIC Journal of Innovation 3rd Edition | Page 26

Results , Insights and Best Practices from IIC Testbeds : Time-Sensitive Networking Testbed
Many IIC members participate in both organizations . Additionally , both have formal liaison relationships with the IIC , easing this information flow . The IIC maintains active liaison relationships with standards organizations , open-source organizations , other consortia and alliances ( either technology-focused or industry-focused ), certification and testing bodies and government entities or agencies . The purpose of these relationships is to generate requirements for new standards from every part of the activities taking place within the IIC . These relationships help eliminate duplication of effort and ensure that new standards and technologies necessary to build and enable the Industrial Internet are brought to market more rapidly .
What other architectures , standards and protocols are potentially influenced by TSN ? When TSN gets into the manufacturing area , the TSN Testbed team anticipates the TSN aspects will influence OPC Unified Architecture ( OPC-UA ), the Object Management Group Data Distribution Services ( OMG DDS ) standard and the ODVA , among others such as SERCOS International or Profinet International are looking to adopt TSN . Common Industrial Protocol ( CIP ), SERCOS and Profinet are industrial automation and control protocols often used between Programmable Logic Controllers ( PLCs ), input / output devices , motors and drives , and robots . They support tight synchronization and tight deterministic systems and can benefit from the capabilities TSN brings .
8 . IIC ECOSYSTEM
The IIC approach to testbeds fosters collaboration and helps the TSN initiative increase awareness and drive adoption . Bringing 12 companies together inevitably leads to questions around Non-Disclosure Agreements ( NDAs ), Intellectual Property , etc . The participants want to ensure no vendor takes any of the results to drive advantages for a small group or for itself . The structure of the IIC helps testbed partners collaborate with enough confidence that sharing or exposing insights and technology is not going to lead to bad press , somebody claiming rights or locking the others out of a marketplace .
According to Paul Didier :
“ We are trying to create a bigger , better marketplace for everybody and therefore we should have a willingness to share and work together towards a common goal . It is good to have an ecosystem where we can collaborate with a number of standards organization to get information from and give feedback to . Without being a standards organization ourselves , it ’ s nice to be able to work with OPC Foundation , with Avnu , IEEE , IETF [ Internet Engineering Task Force ] and whoever else we need .
“ We can get all of the interested parties together , as the standard is being finished , to make sure we can implement it and [ achieve interoperability ]. We are working with the IEEE and Avnu and giving both organizations feedback on how this is working and where there might be clarifications or changes required as we try to get everything working in a real lab .”
The TSN Testbed applies the IIC ’ s Industrial Internet Reference Architecture ( IIRA ), with a focus on the connectivity section on the testbed implementations . In fact , the TSN Testbed participants
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