We’ve been seeing the trend for the better part of a decade; but, according to the annual HMS Industrial Networks’ study, 2017 has become the milestone year in which Industrial Ethernet has, as ultimately expected, finally overtaken fieldbus in numbers of new nodes installed in factory automation applications.

Every industry adheres to a set of standards. These standards ensure that industrial products are manufactured consistently and interact seamlessly. For example, standards are responsible for our ability to make calls and access information on our mobile phones and that our televisions can receive and interpret broadcast signals. The truth is, there are several thousands of standards that affect almost every aspect of our daily lives.

If you’re a regular follower of our blog, you’ve likely seen the topic of Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) pop up repeatedly. That’s because we believe it’s a critical set of technologies that will finally provide timing guarantees for the delivery of time-sensitive data across many mission-critical industries. In our opinion, TSN is one of the most critical new trends of which to take note.

Each year, purveyors and consumers of all things relating to industrial and electrical automation crowd the booths at the SPS IPC Drives exhibition. This year offered up a wide array of exhibits featuring the latest and greatest in industrial automation trends, topics and technologies. For this week’s blog, we caught up with the Belden team members who attended SPS IPC Drives 2017 in Nuremberg, Germany to get a better understanding of what the event had to offer.

IIoT and the rise of industrial automation have changed the business landscape, leading machine builders to aggressively look for new ways to improve. In fact, the entire machine building supply chain has been forced to reinvent and renovate traditional design perspectives and methods. For years, machine builders, OEMs, systems integrators and their distributors have relied on manufacturers, like Belden, to provide them with the products to succeed – from connecting their smart factories to securing their networks.