Industrial world becomes even more connected

The CLPA, responsible for the development and promotion of CC-Link IE and CC-Link and encourages user and manufacturer adoption.

The company claims the CC-Link fieldbus is ‘one of the world’s leading open industrial automation network technologies’. It has achieved significant growth every year since its technical specification was transferred from Mitsubishi Electric to the CC-Link Partner Association (CLPA), making it an open technology in 2000. Since that time, it has gathered strong industry support with products available from over 300 partner companies.

CC-Link quickly became a de facto standard in Japan and then spread throughout China and the majority of Asia. It has also become established in Europe and the Americas and now has a worldwide footprint.

Users tend to be keen on the open status of the technology because it frees them up from being locked into one single automation hardware vendor or a small number of control and automation equipment suppliers. Instead they are able to select components from an ever-expanding pool of world class companies, safe in the knowledge that they are compatible and easily integrated into control networks.

The fieldbus was joined by CC-Link IE in 2007, which is unique in being the only open industrial Ethernet technology that offers gigabit performance with full determinism. It can share large amounts of data in real time, an increasingly important requirement for Industry 4.0 applications, has a highly adaptable topology and exceptional bandwidth.

CC-Link IE offers protocol variations for motion control, safety, and energy management. It is also tailored to specific use at the field and control levels, but maintains gigabit performance with all versions.

CLPA celebrated its 15th Anniversary in 2015, a testament to the global acceptance and widespread adoption of the networks. Its head office is in Japan with regional branches across the world. Mexico and Thailand are the most recent offices to open, showing that the CLPA is continuing to respond to and support the growth of the networks as their use continues to increase worldwide.

The continuing global growth shows that despite beginning in Asia, the networks’ acceptance continues worldwide said John Browett, General Manager of CLPA-Europe.

“The fact that we were able to add over 2,000,000 new installed devices in about a year is evidence that there is strong demand for our technologies. The industry leading technology of the gigabit CC-Link IE is further reason for our strong growth.”