Exporters link into open comms

As the strongest fieldbus protocol in Asia, CC-Link, has over 850 compatible products made by partner companies, and approaching 4,000,000 installed nodes. So European control companies, OEMs and machine builders need to have CC-Link capabilities if they are serious about exporting to the world’s fastest growing manufacturing region.

Throughout Asia automation is synonymous with manufacturing. Engineers in China, India, the Tiger Economies, Japan and across the Pacific Rim have long known that they cannot rely solely on low labour costs, and that automation is essential for the development of their economies.  Predictable and consistent product quality is the greatest arbiter in today’s global markets. Low and lowering prices are increasingly a given, on-time delivery is simply expected and regular product redesigns are taken for granted; quality is the one differentiator that manufacturers can offer.

It is not surprising therefore that Asia is building automated plants far faster than anywhere else in the world. And for device level communications the fieldbus protocol of choice is CC-Link. Less well known in Europe, CC-Lick was developed by Mitsubishi Electric in Japan in the 1990s and released to the public domain as an open system in the 2000. It was developed in recognition of the need for a rugged, flexible, high speed and deterministic device level network for manufacturing companies