On April 4, the Beckhoff Automation Group acquired the manufacturer of highly automated production lines and profile processing machines for materials such as plastic, steel and aluminum, which is also based in Verl. In the 2015 financial year, Schirmer generated sales of 27 million euros and currently employs 120 people. Schirmer and Beckhoff Automation have been working closely together since the very beginning. For 35 years, Beckhoff has been supplying the complete control technology for the Verl-based machine manufacturer. According to Hans Beckhoff, both companies started out as a 'one-man show' in the garage and Schirmer was Beckhoff's very first series customer.

But what exactly motivated Beckhoff as an automation technology provider to invest in a mechanical engineering company? Hans Beckhoff's answer: "Schirmer has installed around 2000 systems to date, of which around 800 are still in the field. By taking over Schirmer, we now have the opportunity to test our latest control technologies in our own 'house' or on our own machinery." In other words, both companies expect the new constellation to result in an even better integration of mechanical engineering and automation. Hans Beckhoff continues: "Together we have already introduced many inventions and occasionally a few real technical revolutions to the market. We will continue this development and it will be of great benefit to both Schirmer's customers and Beckhoff's mechanical engineering customers. Especially against the background of the new possibilities offered by Industry 4.0 and the mechatronic coupling of mechanical engineering and electronics, both companies expect considerable synergies."

First steps towards cloud-based control

Keyword Industry 4.0: One of the many trade fair innovations from Verler was the EK9160 IoT bus coupler for Ethercat terminals. It allows all control and I/O data to be easily transferred to all common cloud systems, including time stamps, via the integrated web server using plug & play. Thanks to its implementation as a bus coupler solution, neither control nor programming is required. A simple configuration for the I/O terminals, cloud services and security functions used is sufficient. Advanced mechanisms are also available, such as local buffering of I/O data on a micro SD card (2 GB) if the internet connection is interrupted.

Using the IoT protocols AMQP, MQTT and OPC UA (over AMQP), the solution supports common cloud systems such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), SAP Hana and also private cloud systems in the company's own network. The EK9160 is also 'Microsoft Azure Certified' and enables communication with multiple clouds thanks to its multi-cloud capability.

The data communication of the IoT bus coupler uses the publisher/subscriber communication principle. This means that the EK9160 sends the data to the cloud as a publisher and another application can access the information as a subscriber. If required, this application can then publish data itself, which the IoT bus coupler can then access. As the devices do not need to know each other or their IP addresses, but only the central message broker, the individual applications work decoupled.

According to company boss Hans Beckhoff, the benefits can be used in all areas of mechanical engineering and building technology. In conjunction with the wide range of Ethercat I/O terminals, the IoT bus coupler can be used to transfer a wide variety of machine and building data to the cloud - for example on temperature, pressure, vibrations or energy consumption. It is also possible to monitor the connected fieldbuses. This means that the I/O signals can be collected not only via Ethercat, but also via a monitor operating mode of the CANopen or Profibus Ethercat terminals and then analyzed by external specialists, for example.

This approach can also be used to implement the concept of cloud-based control. Here, Twincat is located as an IoT controller in the cloud, which acts as an MQTT message broker. The necessary data is supplied by the IoT devices, which can be distributed worldwide if required. In this case, the IoT fieldbus, which was implemented by Beckhoff based on the MQTT protocol, provides the necessary publisher/subscriber communication. This provides all the prerequisites for easily and reliably transferring control and data analysis processes to Twincat in the cloud.

According to Hans Beckhoff, response times of around 60 ms can already be achieved with this approach - as tested using the Twincat runtime environment hosted on a server in the USA. One thing is clear: Industrial applications with their high demands on the determinism of transmission cannot be sensibly controlled with this - but for less demanding applications, for example in the field of building automation, this may well be sufficient. However, even the visionary Hans Beckhoff does not assume that it will be possible to use the cloud approach to reduce response times to an industrial level of just a few milliseconds within the next five years - but the direction we are heading in is clear!

Beckhoff - the 2015 financial year

Beckhoff Automation closed the 2015 financial year with global sales of EUR 620 million; this corresponds to an increase of EUR 110 million (+22%) compared to the previous year. Taking into account a currency adjustment, according to Hans Beckhoff, this results in "further impressive growth of 17%". Beckhoff is now represented by 34 subsidiaries and distributors in over 75 countries. Exports accounted for 65% of total sales in 2015. The company currently employs 3,000 people worldwide, of which almost 2,100 work in Germany and around 1,900 at the Verl site.

Hans Beckhoff is also positive about 2016 and is hoping for double-digit sales growth: "We have a good order intake with growth trends." To ensure that the company is prepared for future growth rates, the operating area of the company headquarters in Verl will be expanded by a further 27,000^m2 in 2016. Existing neighboring industrial buildings have already been rented for this purpose, which will provide additional storage and production space after renovation in the second half of the year. "On the production side, we are thus prepared for two more years of growth," says Hans Beckhoff confidently.