Ep. 263 - Why Industrial Protocols Win on Business Not Technical Merit, with Horner Automation

About this episode

Chuck from Horner Automation discusses the influence of business backing on the success of industrial protocols over technical merit.

Industrial network protocols decide whether a machine talks or stays silent. Chuck from Horner Automation breaks down how they win, fade, and converge. Chuck has spent 36 years at Horner Automation and lived through what the industry once called the fieldbus wars. Before Horner became known for its all in one controllers, it spent a decade building specialty IO modules for GE Fanuc during the era of DeviceNet, SDS, InterBus S, PROFIBUS, and CANopen. His core argument is that most of those early protocols were technically fine. The ones that became standards won on the commercial weight of the companies backing them, not on superior specifications, with EtherCAT a rare exception that succeeded largely on technical merit. Trust is the recurring theme. Industry adopts slowly, and for years Ethernet was dismissed as too unreliable and not deterministic enough for control until Ethernet/IP, PROFINET, and Modbus TCP proved themselves. Today the market has settled around a big four set of protocols, and Chuck does not expect it to narrow further. For high speed motion he points to EtherCAT and PROFINET IRT as the implementations he most respects, since both step away from standard…

People in this episode

Hosts: Dave, Vlad Romanov, Dave Griffith

Guest: Chuck

Topics covered

• industrial protocols
• network communication
• business strategy
• technology adoption
• hardware development

Keywords

• industrial protocols
• EtherCAT
• PROFINET
• networking
• hardware development
• fieldbus wars
• DeviceNet
• commercial success

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Horner Automation, GE Fanuc, EtherCAT, PROFINET, Modbus TCP, DeviceNet, SDS, InterBus S, PROFIBUS, CANopen

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