Ronald Heinze, Chief Editor of “openautomation”, interviewed Hans Beckhoff, managing director of Beckhoff Industrie Elektronik, about the firm‘s current development, future technology and, naturally, also about the situation relating to PC based control technology.

Innovation in the medium sized arena
Beckhoff is a family business based in Germany, founded in 1952. The firm is active in trading and installation, and with a staff of more than 500 they are making a revenue of 164 million DM. The 320 person staff of the Industrial Electronics division managed by Hans Beckhoff, to date, has turned over 130 million DM since its foundation in 1982. As recently as 1990 the figure was no more than 10 million DM. In recent years Beckhoff has grown on average by 29 % a year. Hans Beckhoff is convinced that good growth potential will be maintained in the future. He has set his company the growth target of “a factor of 10 in 10 years”, pointing out that “the new global automation market sets no boundaries for us, so that the processing industry and building automation sectors, for instance, are presenting us with more new business niches, with interesting prospects for growth and turnover”. He plans to achieve this growth with “good products” that are “multicultural”, and therefore suitable for a vast variety of applications.

Hans Beckhoff emphasizes that the other two divisions in the Elektro Beckhoff group are also on the road to growth. It becomes clear that “there are no grounds for changing the trusted structure of the family business.” Beckhoff wants to continue their success with organic growth – without stock market flotation, and without chasing the kind of new business that is aimed purely at revenue growth.

A presence in the international market is ensured through subsidiary firms in Switzerland, Austria, Finland, USA and the new founded representation in China. With their international trading partners, Beckhoff is represented in a total of 27 countries.

All the fieldbus systems are still growing
“One of the most important milestones in the company‘s history was the introduction of the Bus Terminal in 1995, in the wake of customers‘ demands for more modularity” explained the Verl businessman. Bus Terminal PLCs for distributed automation tasks have been added to these, and, since 1999, in cooperation with Turck, Fieldbus Box modules with protection class IP 67 for the sensor and actuator level.

The fieldbus components now contribute almost 50 % to the firm‘s revenue. Mr. Beckhoff, a qualified physicist, is well aware that all of the fieldbus systems are presently still growing. “Fieldbusses are nowadays a standard technology in automation. Each fieldbus has found its particular niche, with the potential to grow.” This includes the Lightbus, introduced by Beckhoff in 1989, which has become established as a standard in a number of sectors of machine construction. This fiber optic bus allows interference-free fieldbus communication for fast machine controllers.

He sees, nevertheless, better prospects for those solutions which are backed by market leaders. These include, in his opinion, Profibus, DeviceNet, Ethernet TCP/IP/UDP “in all its flavors”, and High Speed Ethernet from the Fieldbus Foundation. He sees no prospects for other new protocols, such as ATM, originating in telecommunications.

“Beckhoff is the I/O company”, the owner continues. “We want to see Beckhoff playing a part wherever there are I/O signals – the right technology for every signal and every fieldbus.” In no way is this restricted to just machine automation, but includes, for instance, instrumentation, building automation and equipment construction. Within the fieldbus sector, Beckhoff has entered into a variety of cooperative ventures with, for example, TR, Wago and Turck. Hans Beckhoff states “so far both sides have always profited from these joint development projects”.

Other outstanding company milestones were the introduction of TwinCAT in 1996 and of Control Panels in 1998. TwinCAT is the integrated automation software whose name stands for “The Windows Control and Automation Technology”. Since 2000 Beckhoff has also been offering industrial Ethernet products.

Hans Beckhoff went on to say that “We are also an IPC company. Whenever anyone thinks in terms of an Industrial PC, we want to be present.” Here again, the 47-year old entrepreneur includes other markets in addition to automation. Beckhoff supplies the right Industrial PC for every application. Last year the works in the german headquarters produced a total of 5000 standard Industrial PCs, Control Cabinet PCs and Control Panels. This year‘s figure is already expected to double that amount totalling 10,000.

As a third point, he sees the business as “The Automation Company”. With “New Automation Technology” he is firmly pursuing the philosophy of PC based automation, in accordance with which more and more hardware functions are being transferred to software. Anyone who knows Beckhoff knows that he has a near traditional opposition to hardware controllers. “PC based automation ensures market success”, is Hans Beckhoff‘s confident declaration.

The qualified physicist is convinced that IT will have an even stronger influence on automation in the future. Ethernet, XML and UPnP could become the standards of the future. The Beckhoff staff is therefore cooperating, for example, on the standardization of UPnP at the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond. Just what constitutes PC based automation? Beckhoff points first to the separation of hardware and software. Software like TwinCAT performs the functions. The hardware is based on standard platforms. Presently that still means the PC above all. “With Windows CE, the control software is shifting towards the embedded sector”, says the automation specialist.

Long proven availability of PC solutions
The manager knows that “machine designers like the openness of PC based automation, because their know-how is implemented in open software solutions instead of being hidden in special hardware”. What does he have to say about availability? “We have been promoting PC based control for 15 years. We are gaining customers and losing none. The availability of PC solutions has long been proven in practice; it is good.”

He can provide many examples to demonstrate this: At the Continental tire works in Timisoara/Romania, PC based automation is an element in the prescribed operating resources. Since 1994 PC based automation has been used at Schütte, in Germany, for the multiple spindle autolathes used for gearing manufacture, initially using DOS as the operating system. In the meantime the next version is ready, and this will bring a changeover to Windows NT/2000. The complex pressing lines at Müller-Weingarten also use PC based control from Beckhoff. Therefore, Hans Beckhoff is certain that “the ice is broken.” PC based automation is a mainstream technology, and “we no longer have to do hard work to make our case.” Since Beckhoff has placed such emphasis on the PC, all the advantages of the web are also available. “For us, this is just the natural development, not something that we are announcing as a new philosophy”, said the businessman, reminding that Beckhoff was using remote diagnosis twelve years ago. It‘s bread and butter. Hans Beckhoff can be quite relaxed as he states, “We are remaining true to our course, and are continuing to promote the Industrial PC”.

Integration from the Bus Terminal to the Industrial PC
Beckhoff see themselves as complete suppliers to the automation sector, and offer, from the drive through the Bus Terminal up to the Industrial PC, integrated yet open solutions marketed under the name of PC Control. “We can take the responsibility for all the relevant elements” he continues. He plans to use four hardware platforms for this purpose. He predicts a long future yet for the Windows-based x86 architectures as the upper performance platform. Windows in all its variations, Windows Embedded and Windows CE are used here. CE-based systems are used on processors of lower performance. The automation software, however, is always TwinCAT. Beckhoff: “In this way we can offer consistency for our automation architectures.”

Beckhoff is fitting C165-based 16-bit processors to the Bus Couplers. The lowest performance level is represented by 8-bit processors from Arizona Microchips, for example in terminals for analog signals. “So there is nothing left to be desired for our system architectures”, is Hans Beckhoff‘s claim. “There is a suitable platform for every price and performance bracket.”

System-oriented thinking is very important to Beckhoff. Thus the entire Beckhoff automation environment consistently uses the ADS (Automation Device Specification) communication architecture, which can run over a variety of bus systems – comparable to IDA or Ethernet/IP. Beckhoff: “We recognized the need for such a communication layer at an early stage. Communication is just as important at the automation function itself.” He considers the idea that automation suppliers might agree on a standardized solution to be unrealistic.

“Standards in automation can, however, come from outside.” Beckhoff therefore use their own powerful technologies, based on the standards of the most powerful market forces such as Microsoft.

Which communication standards originating elsewhere will PC based automation handle in future? “If we were to abandon all legacy technologies, PC based automation would only need USB, DVI for connection to video monitors, and Ethernet”, was the automation specialist‘s reply.

Know-how for every bit
Why do Beckhoff develop everything themselves? “If there is an understanding of every bit and every byte within your own company, you can also cope with any automation task” pointed out Hans Beckhoff. Thus Beckhoff can also “supply what are probably the fastest machine controllers in the world - with cycle times down to 50 µs. This would be impossible with bought-in solutions.”

Beckhoff also develop and manufacture the PC Fieldbus Cards themselves. Thus, there are PCI-based solutions for Lightbus, CANopen, DeviceNet, SERCOS and for Profibus, with a specific FPGA that already supports Profibus Motion Control. Beckhoff: “We are a product company, and we take pleasure in developing new solutions.” For this reason, the 320 employees at Beckhoff worldwide include no less than 130 engineers.

Ronald Heinze, Chief Editor of openautomation, ETZ and Building Automation at VDE Verlag (Source "openautomation 02/2001")

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