New CLPA Chair

CC-Link is a global industrial open network standard used to provide communications around automated systems such as factories, machinery and high-tech buildings. Originally developed by Mitsubishi Electric, it was made an open technology in 2000 and is now supported by over 280 different companies.

Professor Fumihiko Kimura enjoys an international reputation based on 40 years of research into various fields related to manufacturing and production including CAD/CAM, inverse manufacturing, life-cycle engineering and geometric modelling. In recent years he has led research into areas such as environmentally friendly product design (eco design), product life-cycle design, sustainability and flexible production systems.

Recent years have seen an unstoppable rise in the importance of data for improving the efficiency of manufacturing and Professor Kimura identifies open network technologies such as CC-Link and CC-Link IE (the Industrial Ethernet variant) as essential for supporting this trend in the future. Not only will they aid the collection of ever more data from the manufacturing processes, they will also allow integration with data from upstream and downstream stages, so that a product's whole lifecycle can be analysed and optimised for minimum environmental impact.

Professor Kimura also expects CC-Link to become a major plank in the development of the current automation trend of "Industry 4.0", because of the links between CC-Link, the Internet of Things (IoT) and this trend. The IoT will see machines, sensors, equipment, etc. ('things') interconnected in the same way that the Internet connects people. He points out that because there are far more 'things' in the world than people it is inevitable that the IoT will be bigger and more powerful than the Internet and its impact correspondingly greater. For instance the rapid analysis of vast data sets will enable manufacturers to monitor their products' total lifecycle so that product and process development will become truly continuous.

This is a key part of Industry 4.0 and bandwidth is the engine that will drive this technology. For devices to all share information in real time, it's essential that they be connected by a network that permits this. CC-Link IE, with its unique open gigabit Ethernet capability, is currently the only open automation network technology that can offer this level of support for Industry 4.0.

Furthermore, Prof. Kimura predicts that the IoT is on the cusp of widespread acceptance and adoption, so its mass impact and hence the adoption of Industry 4.0 is happening now.

Professor Kimura's current work is focused on environmentally friendly product design. To support this research, it was necessary to first collect data from different manufacturing processes in order to evaluate how these processes impact the environment. Several different companies have allowed him to collect this data via their CC-Link network installations and this is being used to verify the evaluation method.