Following two years of pandemic-induced virtual meetings, ODVA roared back March 9-10 with its in-person Industry Conference and Annual Meeting in San Diego that was attended by more than 85 automation industry professionals from 30 companies. The 21st annual meeting of the international standards development and trade organization was highlighted by ODVA's advances in EtherNet/IP and its other Common Industrial Protocol (CIP) standards, integration with related technologies such as time-sensitive networking (TSN) and Ethernet advanced physical layer (APL), and cooperation with organizations such as the OPC Foundation, FieldComm Group and FDT Group.
"We grew ODVA's membership to more than 365 members during the 21st term, and welcomed Harting as the newest principal member of the association," said Al Beydoun, president and executive director of ODVA, during his keynote address on the event's second day. "We continued to enhance and expand ODVA’s technologies thanks to the efforts of 13 active working groups, whose members labored continuously behind the scenes to bring more than 80 specification enhancements in key areas like CIP Security, Ethernet-APL, and in-cabinet and resource-constrained devices. We also formed and launched the Market Advisory Committee (MAC) to advise the organization on market trends; promoted ODVA’s technologies at global virtual events and tradeshows; continued to grow adoption of ODVA’s technologies by offering virtual training during the pandemic; and focused on growth in China by standardizing and translating EtherNet/IP to align with the Chinese GB/T standard."
In the past term, Beydoun reported that ODVA also:
- Continued to gain support within ODVA for EtherNet/IP over TSN by securing participation in the IEC 60802 TSN industrial profile; collaborating with organizations to develop conformance specifications for TSN profiles; and refining its path forward with a committee from ODVA's technical review board (TRB).
- Recertified the CIP Safety standard, Volume 5, Edition 2.22, with TÜV Rheinland to comply with IEC 61784-3, Edition 4.
- Collaborated on device integration with the FieldComm Group by establishing support for EtherNet/IP with FDI Device Package and FDI tools, and working with the FDT Group to integrate EtherNet/IP with the FDT IIoT Server (FITS) architecture.
- Continued expanding the EtherNet/IP ecosystem to meet the needs of Industry 4.0 and IIoT users via joint working groups developing an OPC-UA companion specification for EtherNet/IP.
- Progressed on developing ODVA’s xDS next-generation digital device descriptions.
Two other keynotes were delivered by Paul Maurath, technical director for process automation at Procter & Gamble Co., who spoke about the future of the field instrumentation layer in process automation, and by Harry Forbes, industry analyst at ARC Advisory Group, who spoke on the next decade of industrial automation. The conference's technical sessions covered: IEC 61784-3, Edition 4, certification of CIP Safety; xDSTM device description development; single-pair Ethernet and Ethernet-APL advances; TSN for EtherNet/IP preparation; continued CIP Security expansion with the CIP Authorization Profile; and CIP to OPC UA cloud connectivity progress.
"ODVA has been continuously improving EtherNet/IP to stay ahead of critical trends such as Industry 4.0, IIoT, safety, security and interoperability. Recent achievements include the extension of EtherNet/IP networks to in-cabinet, resource-constrained devices such as contactors and pushbuttons," said Steve Fales, ODVA's marketing director. "The ability to obtain diagnostic, prognostic and asset identity information remotely from devices with the smallest physical footprint and most limited hardware resources opens up further opportunities for digital transformation and reduction of incidents of unplanned downtime. To align with these changes, CIP Security has also been streamlined for resource-constrained devices as an essential step in securing the edge. Also, CIP Security has been updated to support user-level authentication with a narrow trust domain by user and role."
During the conference, ODVA's members also elected their board of directors for the organization's 22nd term:
- Dr. Rolf Birkhofer, managing director of process solutions at Endress+Hauser,
- Jon DeSouza, president and CEO of Harting Americas,
- Satoshi Kojima, GM of the controller division's network product management group at Omron,
- David Lagerstrom, president and CEO of Turck USA,
- Davis Mathews, VP of the Americas regional business unit for automation infrastructure at Phoenix Contact USA,
- Samuel Pasquier, senior director of product management for IoT industrial networking and security at Cisco Systems,
- Thomas Petersen, senior director of fieldbus and system integration at Danfoss,
- Brian Reynolds, senior director of engineering, projects and automation solutions at Honeywell
- André Uhl, VP of technology and architecture at Schneider Electric, and
- Dr. Jürgen Weinhofer, VP of common architecture and technology at Rockwell Automation.
For more information, or to download the event's technical papers and presentations, visit www.odva.org/news-events/industry-conference/library-of-proceedings
