For smart factories, it is particularly important to keep the equipment running safely and stably. According to McKinsey's statistics, the factory will be shut down for 800 hours a year on average. The reasons for the shutdown are equipment safety inspections and equipment failure repairs,etc. Take a car manufacturer as an example, if it stops production for one minute, it will lose 22,000 US dollars, and 1.3 million US dollars for one hour.Factory shutdowns have caused high economic losses. Maxim Integrated is working hard on the IO interface to launch an IO-Link communication solution which make the edge intelligent, reduce downtime, and increase production efficiency by 10% to 20%.
As a semiconductor supplier, Maxim Integrated uses new ideas to give the edge intelligence from four aspects: smart sensors, smart actuators, software configurable IO, and enhanced diagnostic functions.
How to realize edge intelligence on the IO side? The answer given by Maxim Integrated is the IO-Link hub.
Regarding the Industrial Internet of Things, Maxim Integrated also has an Industrial Internet of Things platform with a volume of only 12cm3, which integrates I/O modules, isolation modules, 485 communication modules, etc., with features of small size and low power consumption.
Maxim Integrated Industrial Internet of Things product timeline:
In 2014, launched the product Micro PLC with a volume of 540cm3, which reduced the size of the PLC.This is a great improvement from the perspective of industrial PLC;
In 2016, launched the second-generation solution Pocket IO, with a volume of 167cm3,which lower a 30% power consumption than the previous generation;
In 2018, the third-generation industrial Internet of Things solution Go-IO was launched. The volume is further reduced than the previous generation, about 12cm3, which is one-tenth of the size of the previous generation, and the power consumption is also 50% lower than the previous generation;
In 2020, the latest generation of product software can be configured with IO, the size of which is the same as the previous generation product Go-IO, and there are two versions of industrial automation and building automation.