Simplifying functional safety communication in modular, heterogeneous production lines

Heterogeneous production lines as a keystone of smart factories, comprised of machines from various manufacturers, are placing a new range of demands on communication and interoperability. Connectivity is the key element for seamless data communication in Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). This includes standardized protocols and interfaces as well as vendor neutral technologies. An important aspect of a production line, is functional safety and its technical implementation. Up to now, safety-relevant connections between devices of different manufacturers have been implemented using dedicated cables and line monitoring. The aim of this paper is to design an integrated safety architecture based upon existing technologies. The method proposed in this paper aims at achieving functional safety connectivity, along with non-safe data traffic, based on the vendor-neutral technologies Ethernet, Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN), and OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA).