function esconde_anuncio(divId) { cambiarTexto(""); /*if (document.layers) document.layers[divId].visibility = 'hidden'; else if (document.all) document.all[divId].style.visibility = 'hidden'; else if (document.getElementById) document.getElementById(divId).style.visibility = 'hidden'; */ } function mostrar_anuncio(divId) { /*state=typeof topPos; if(state=='undefined') topPos=-260; if(topPos < 75) { topPos+=3; if (document.layers) document.layers[divId].top = topPos; else if (document.all) document.all[divId].style.top = topPos; else if (document.getElementById) document.getElementById(divId).style.top = topPos; setTimeout("mostrar_anuncio('partnerspop');",15); }*/ /*if (document.layers) document.layers[divId].top = 75; else if (document.all) document.all[divId].style.top = 75; else if (document.getElementById) document.getElementById(divId).style.top = 75; */ if (document.layers) document.layers[divId].visibility = 'visible'; else if (document.all) document.all[divId].style.visibility = 'visible'; else if (document.getElementById) document.getElementById(divId).style.visibility = 'visible'; } function crearCuadro(sPartnerName) { if (parseInt(navigator.appVersion) >= 4) { /*if (document.layers) document.layers.partnerspop.left = ((window.innerWidth / 2) - (330 / 2)); else if (document.all) document.all.partnerspop.style.left = ((document.body.offsetWidth / 2) - (330 / 2)); else if (document.getElementById) document.getElementById("partnerspop").style.left = ((window.innerWidth / 2) - (330 / 2)); if (document.layers) document.layers.partnerspop.width = "400px"; else if (document.all) document.all.partnerspop.style.width = "400px"; else if (document.getElementById) document.getElementById("partnerspop").style.width = "400px";*/ cambiarTexto(sPartnerName); mostrar_anuncio('partnerspop'); } } function cambiarTexto(sPartnerName) { var sTexto=""; if (sPartnerName=="siemens") { sTexto="
Type: Industry
Country: Germany
The SIEMENS Automation and Drives Group is directly involved in the project. But based on internal information flow and dissemination other groups within SIEMENS will be also reached. The SIEMENS Automation and Drives Group (A&D), Nuremberg, Germany, is the leading manufacturer in this field world-wide. Products supplied by A&D include standard products for the manufacturing and process industries and for the electrical installation industry as well as system solutions, for example for machine tools, and solutions for whole industries such as the automation of entire automobile factories or chemical plants. A&D also offers software for linking production and management (horizontal and vertical IT integration) and for optimising production processes. A&D employs 51,200 people world-wide and in fiscal year 2002 earned an operational profit of €723 million on sales of €8.6 billion and orders of €8.7 billion. Together with other departments of A&D like PLC and Motion Control, SIMATIC NET industrial communication is involved in the innovative technological aspects of the VAN project. SIMATIC NET is a department within Automation and Drives providing a wide range of industrial communication products and solutions ranging from connectors, cables, network components up to powerful embedded communication devices and software for Industrial Ethernet and IT solutions. SIMATIC NET was one of the first supplier of Industrial Ethernet components for the factory floor to enable powerful communication for PLCs. Beside communication devices for AS-Interface, PROFIBUS, PROFInet and Industrial Ethernet including IT functionality for embedded systems like PLCs or network components, the wireless communication in industrial environment and mobile information devices like industrial web pad are in the product and development scope. Also the areas of Real-time Ethernet communication and telecontrol are covered.

"; } else if (sPartnerName=="aucoteam") { sTexto="
Type: Industry
Country: Germany
Nature of business: Planning and realisation of monitoring and Control systems, System integrator - Role in project: Centralised process Control of distributed technological Systems - Role in exploitation: Final design, prototyping realisation Role in project: Centralised process Control of distributed technological Systems AUCOTEAM is an independent system integrator for projects of automation – ranging from the first consultation to training and customer-services. Based on the know how of about 160 experienced, high qualified engineers, computer experts and skilled workers, the company guarantees efficient, user-friendly solutions and high flexibility in processing the Task. The focus of the activities of AUCOTEAM are the following sectors: industry, buildings, environment, public bodies and administrations. The high degree of professional competence of the specialist forms at the same time the basis for a various supply at innovation engineering and manufacturing services. It covers: - Project engineering and implementation and data communication plants, - Software engineering, - Tailor-made development, design as well as environmental and reliability tests, - Manufacturing services in the sheet metal processing and switch cabinet manufacturing. The company works in the area of automation and data communication plants in the fields of measuring and control systems, process control systems and data communication. The department of software engineering develops products for automation among other things e.g. tele-control protocols, fieldbus technologies (LON, EIB, INTERBUS, CAN, PROFIBUS), products for administration solutions and for data base applications (Oracle, MS-SQL and other). The company has an innovative engineering services for tailor-made hardware and software solutions as well as R&D services, for environmental tests and for training. Manufacturing services exists for thin sheet metal processing & casing manufacture and switch cabinet manufacturing. The company has a lot of experiences in the area of project management.

"; } else if (sPartnerName=="heitec") { sTexto="
Type: Industry
Country: Germany
HEITEC was founded in 1984 in Erlangen by Richard Heindl and since then has developed into a leading European solution provider for automation and information technology. Early in 2000, a part of the HEITEC group changed its legal form to become stock corporation (Aktiengesellschaft). HEITEC offers complete, custom tailored solutions supplied by one and the same provider. HEITEC sees itself not only as a competent and efficient partner for large companies, but also smaller and medium-sized enterprises benefit more and more from HEITEC being in the lead as to the experience in this technological sector. HEITEC is a company with about 350 employees and a turnover of 27 Mio €. It is located at nine places in Germany, three of them are situated in the new laender of Germany. HEITEC GmbH Auerbach as a member of the HEITEC group is also located in the new laender of Germany. In the project VAN the HEITEC branch in Berlin (eastern part) will participate. HEITEC will work on the VAN prototype implementation and integration of the open platform for the manufacturing industry, e.g. ARINSTEIN in Poland as a manufacturer for machine tools. HEITEC will be the leader of the task 4.5 – Validation of Prototype Implementations. HEITEC has a lot of experience in the field of qualification and validation of software for machines and plants, especially in the sector of the chemistry/pharmaceutical industry. HEITEC also has experience in the development of complex network based applications. HEITEC wants to integrate the results of VAN in his already realised Fault-Cause-Information System which is based on an distributed network and which needs an heterogeneous architecture to integrate additional functions.

"; } else if (sPartnerName=="arinstein") { sTexto="
Type: Industry
Country: Poland
ARINSTEIN Polska was founded in1998 by Dr. Mark Arinstein. ARINTEIN-Polska is a production plant for machine tools. In Slubice, Poland, ARINSTEIN develops and produces modular lathe centres for metal working in cooperation with Mark Arinstein Maschinen & Anlagen GmbH in Dahlwitz - Hoppegarten, Germany. These machine tools are equipped with the latest CNC-systems from Siemens. ARINSTEIN sells most of his machines to the CIS states.ARINSTEIN is in cooperation with several other companies in Germany and in Eastern Europe. ARINSTEIN needs to integrate a heterogeneous network like VAN to handle his communication all over his partners and between all the distributed applications. By using the results of VAN ARINSTEIN wants to realise a distributed development of new products and a distributed test and validation of his manufactured machine tools under real-time conditions.In the project VAN ARINSTEIN will bring in his requirements for the production of his machine tools. It wants to specify the application specific architecture. In the second part of the project ARINSTEIN will test and validate the realised prototype. This should be the main scope of work.

"; } else if (sPartnerName=="fidia") { sTexto="
Type: Industry
Country: Italy
FIDIA is one of the European leaders in manufacturing Numerical Controls and High Speed Milling Machines for dies and moulds making. The company has also developed and offers CAM modules suitable in particular for on line generation of part programs (HIMILL), and high performance servo drives. Fidia recently opened 2 company sites located in Naples and Bari (Italy) totally dedicated to research activities. FIDIA is committed to developing solutions aiming at improving the NC and machine tools performances in several directions: Dynamics, Process Control, NC Architecture. Consequently, FIDIA is or has been participating in several research consortia. In particular, FIDIA was the prime contractor in the projects: HIQU (EP 6293), KERNEL II (BE 7423), SENC (ESSI 10491), DIAMOND (BE 4886), PSP-NC (ESSI 24060), REINDEER (IST 20288), SEC&TEC (GRD 10227), PENGUIN PC (IST 28152), OCEAN (IST 37394 ). In addition, FIDIA participated in FAME (EP 5471), OPTIMAL (EP 8643), ELCANO (EP 25297), SIMON (EP 22417), IMS-SIMON (EP 26504), MW-1 (BE 1818), MOSYN (BE 1532), AUTOMAT (EP 22273), MOTION (BE 3424), SMART (GRD 10717) and other Projects.

"; } else if (sPartnerName=="ifak") { sTexto="Type: Research
Country: Germany
The Institut für Automation und Kommunikation (ifak), founded in 1991, is a non-profit research institute with 50 employees, mainly graduated engineers, partly holding a PhD or working as University Professors, and in addition a number of guest scientists, students in practical training and diploma thesis students. The head of the institute is Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Peter Neumann. The main activities of the ifak aim at applied basic research and the solution of development tasks in the field of automation. The activities of ifak regarding communication systems are in the research areas of development of communication protocols (e.g. PROFIBUS, PROFInet) including protocol description (formal protocol specification) and protocol implementation for embedded systems, application of telecommunication, wireless and Internet based protocols in automation as part of a virtual automation communication domain, investigation of new functions of Network Management in communication systems for automation (plug and play functions), security and safety related extensions to automation protocols and, development of test systems for interoperability tests (PROFIBUS DP and PA test lab and PROFInet Competence Centre (PCC) of the PROFIBUS User Organisation). Based on the long term experiences of ifak in the field of formal specification our specialists have been ordered for national and international specification and standardisation work in the last years. Ifak essentially contributed to the further development of the international fieldbus standard IEC61158 by specifying the PROFInet communication protocol, and is presently specifying the real-time protocol PROFInet IO. Addressing the area of industrial wireless communication, the aim of the European project ”Rfieldbus”' (IST-1999-11316) was to develop a high performance radio fieldbus, based on existing radio technologies and standardised fieldbus protocols, and also being apt for multimedia applications. Furthermore, a new technical committee headed by members of ifak was established within the VDI/VDE Society of Measurement and Automatic Control (GMA), which deals with the industrial usage of radio technology in automation systems. The non-interrupted engineering of heterogeneous components based on common information models is a new quality in process control systems. The activities of ifak regarding Engineering are in the research areas (technologies) of Electronic Device Description Language (EDDL), Component Technologies (e.g. Field Device Tool - FDT, PROFInet), Function Blocks (e.g. IEC61499, IEC61131, IEC61804), and Profiles. The Brite EuRam Project Advanced Control Network (ACORN, BRPR-CT95-0117) provided a framework to integrate software engineering tools as a Function Block Editor, a device Editor, a Network Configuration Tool and a Simulation Tool. The ESPRIT Project Network Oriented Application Harmonisation (NOAH, EP26951) provided a architecture to access field devices in heterogeneous environments. The ITEA Project PROTEUS (01011) will provide a fully integrated platform that is able to support any broad e-maintenance strategy. Within the VAN project ifak is mainly in charge for tasks that are dealing with specification. Employees of ifak have got experiences in specification of communication protocols, even for IEC standardisation.

"; } else if (sPartnerName=="mcm") { sTexto="Type: Industry
Country: Italy
MCM was established in 1978 and it has had a constant growth during the years. At present, it has a staff of 225 people and the turnover of the year 2003 was of about 58 million Euro with an export quota of 30%.In 1987 MCM incorporated its subsidiary company MCM FRANCE sarl for the sale and after-sale service in France, Belgium and Spain. The areas of Northern Europe (Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland) are supported by the subsidiary company MCM DEUTSCHLAND founded in 1996. In 1997 MCM USA Inc. was incorporated in Chicago and it gives the sales and after-sales support for North America. MCM designs, produces, installs and services all its machining centers and production systems. The heart of MCM is the Designing, Research and Development Dept.: it is the place where ideas are realised into innovative solutions. The MCM production is based on three important operations: purchase of standard components, purchase of special components produced according to MCM design and assembly and quality control. The solution of the customer’s problems is the priority job for the after-sale dept. whose staff is of about 40 engineers. The 10 engineers of the Software and Engineering dept. realise the software for the systems’ management; their latest product is the jFMX – java powered Flexible Manufacturing Executive: it is the basis for the integration of the production systems into the enterprise Web.MCM production is based on a complete range of high quality horizontal axis machining centers, FMCs – flexible manufacturing cells and FMSs – flexible manufacturing systems. A series of standard automation modules complete the possibilities to configure the different systems according to customer’s needs. MCM also designs and produces its electrospindles, tool changing systems and rotary tables. MCM supplies its machines to all productions areas where the requirements in terms of precision, speed, machining time and highly intensive exploitation of the hours/year resources are top priority objective. Therefore, MCM’s leading sectors are: automotive industry, aerospace industry, molds, pneumatics, and mechanical industry.

"; } else if (sPartnerName=="phoenix") { sTexto="Type: Industry
Country: Germany
Phoenix Contact Electronics GmbH is the R&D and production site of the business unit automation systems of Phoenix Contact GmbH & Co KG. Phoenix Contact is a medium size enterprise with 6100 employees world-wide in 2003. Phoenix develops, produces and markets world-wide a broad product spectrum of hardware and software components for the electrical and automation control engineering. For these products a set of services e.g. developer and user trainings for Automations systems is provided also. Approx. 15 years ago Phoenix began this with the development of the fieldbus system INTERBUS, which took over a prominent role, under the system guidance of Phoenix Contact, in different industries of manufacturing automation e.g. the automotive industry. The existing knowledge of field communication network development and application, embedded system design, wireless communication and safety concepts will be used to contribute to the VAN project specification and prototype development with special focus on the usability of the VAN results in the manufacturing industry. Phoenix is active in different national and international standardisation committees, e.g. DKE, CENELEC, IEC and ISO. In these committees Phoenix contributed to the specification and editing of different standards - e. g. IEC 61158 (fieldbus). Moreover Phoenix also is initial member of different industrial user groups, e.g. INTERBUS club, DRIVECOM and IAONA. This knowledge of standardisation at different levels will be used to contribute to the standardisation and dissemination activities of the VAN project. Phoenix Contact has already experience with national and international R&D projects. E. g. a national project 'FUNBUS' within the German frame program »Production 2000«, dealing with wireless technologies in industrial automation systems. Phoenix was involved in the IST framework 5 project 'PABADIS', where Phoenix, besides the technical work, was responsible for the IMS project coordination task.

"; } else if (sPartnerName=="polimilan") { sTexto="Type: Research
Country: Italy
Politecnico di Milano is the largest technical university in Italy and one of the largest in Europe. The Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione (DEI) is among the largest ones of the Politecnico di Milano as it has 150 faculties, about 80 junior researchers, 100 PhD students and an administrative and technical staff of 50 people. The DEI is devoted to innovative research and advanced education in the most important fields of information technology. DEI is responsible for bachelor/master/PhD curricula in electronics, computer engineering, control engineering and telecommunications, and the new one in automation engineering, started in 2001 and enrolling about 150 students. The DEI has been directly involved in more than one hundred EC research projects and has incomes for more then 3 million Euros each year from research contracts.

"; } else if (sPartnerName=="schneider") { sTexto="Type: Industry
Country: Germany
SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC GmbH belongs to Schneider Electric, a global leading company in the automation and electrical distribution business with main development sites in Sophia Antipolis (France), Seligenstadt (Germany) and North Andover (United States, MA). It combines the Telemecanique, SquareD, Modicon and former AEG master brands of the parent company Schneider Electric Industries, France. The SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC INDUSTRIAL AUTOMATION brands offer its target industrial process end users and OEM customers superior products and services throughout their automation journey. Currently Schneider Electric Industries employing 83000 people world-wide and generated sale of around 8.8 billion € Euro in 2003 through 13000 sales outlets in 130 countries. Key customers like Daimler Chrysler, Coca Cola, VW, Mars, Opel, Merck, General Motors, Ford, BASF, Thyssen, Burton are using the competencies and project experiences in the automation and electrical distribution business of Schneider Electric Industrial Automation. Innovative technologies like PC based control systems are developed and driven by Schneider as well as contributions to international standards for automation like IEC 61131 and IEC 61499. Further Schneider is leading in the combination of IT and industrial automation, in the usage of Web-based technology, Internet based protocols and in development of collaborative agent-oriented software for flexible control systems.

"; } else if (sPartnerName=="tsa") { sTexto="Type: Industry
Country: Germany
TSA is a services and applications developer and a strategic consultant focused on Information Society issues and the IT Security sector. Teleport has co-ordinated and participated in a number of European R&D projects developing and setting up state-of-the-art communication and information services, e-commerce platforms, clearing and billing systems, various communication infrastructures etc. TSA investigates and evaluates newly arising technologies early on and sets them in the framework of projects in a context of technical-economic and socio-economic use. These rest on a large variety of studies and of project and consultation activities for commercial and political institutions as well. TELEPORT clients have been and continue to be the German Ministry of the Economy, Ministries of some regional governments in Germany and Spain; the European Commission, the European Parliament and international organisations such as RETI (European Association of Regions for Industrial Technology).

"; } else if (sPartnerName=="cartif") { sTexto="Type: Research
Country: Spain
CARTIF is a Spanish Applied Research Centre involved on R&D&i and technology transfer activities. CARTIF also carries out activities of scientific technical education and diffusion to achieve efficient results and transfer to the end users. Taking advantage of the multidisciplinary skills and technological know-how of Valladolid University researchers, this non-profit organisation works towards the aim of transferring the latest technologies and methodologies into industry. The Centre is integrated in the Castilla and Leon Technology Centres Network and in the Science and Technology Spanish Interministerial Commission, keeping a close collaboration with the most representative organisations of regional and national industrial development: Castilla and Leon Development Agency, the Spanish Ministry of Science And Technology and the Innovation Programme of the European Commission. CARTIF is certified according to UNE EN ISO 9001:2000 and UNE EN ISO 14001:1996. The Centre, which its core technological areas are robotics and advanced automation, has been and continues to be involved in research funded by a number of sources: both from Spanish government and European research programs, and collaborative efforts and strategic alliances with the University of Valladolid. In the last four years more than 120 projects have been carried out, 90% related to applied industrial research and the rest regarding reports, technical studies, auditing, training activities and technological dissemination. Currently is engaged in the development of seven European funded projects.

"; } else if (sPartnerName=="mand") { sTexto="Type: Research, Higher Education
Country: Germany
A working group within the Institute of Ergonomics, Manufacturing Systems and Automation (IAF) at the University of Magdeburg represents the Center Distributed Systems (CVS). The main competence of the CVS lies in the development of distributed control systems based on distributed intelligence, advanced communication technology, complex security technologies and real-time systems. A fully equipped research laboratory containing all available products for Real-Time Java (Siemens Sicomp, aJile and different implementations of the Real-Time Specification for Java), according real-time operating systems (different real-time implementations of Linux, QNX etc.) and plant simulation models are operated. CVS gained in-depth knowledge during the research work especially in real-time Ethernet, INDUSTRIAL Ethernet, application of UML, application of web-technologies in automation systems, application of agent systems and the usage of Plug-and- Play mechanisms. The CVS has proven its competence in different aspects of distributed systems in different national and European projects. The most important projects are: “Total lifecycle web-integrated control (TORERO)” and “Plant automation based on distributed systems” (PABADIS), both funded by the EU under the IST programme and coordinated by the CVS. Further on, the CVS manages the office of the Industrial Automation Open Networking Alliance e.V. (IAONA). This entails the active collaboration in different Technical Working Groups of IAONA, especially the JTWGs “Real-Time” and “Security”. The CVS contributes to the following points of VAN: - Design of real-time networks for automation systems. - Complex security systems for automation system networks- Integration of automation system networks into enterprise networks - Design of object models representing automation systems - Engineering of automation systems.

"; } else if (sPartnerName=="fzk") { sTexto="Type: Research
Country: Germany
Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe GmbH (FZK) is an independent science and research institution in Germany with a staff of about 3500 employees. In the area of technology and the environment, the Centre devotes its attention to research and development work in the interest of the public. It is funded by the Federal Republic of Germany and the Land Baden-Württemberg and is a member of the Helmholtz Association of National Research Centres. Helmholtz Centres perform top-class research in strategic programmes in six core fields: Energy, Earth and Environment, Health, Key Technologies, Structure of Matter, Transport and Space. As one organizational unit of Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe Projektträger Foprschungszentrum Karlsruhe (PTKA) works as a Project Management Agency in charge of preparing and managing programs in cooperation with the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Federal Ministry of Economy and Labour (BMWA) and the Land Baden-Wuertemberg and their Landesstiftung. PTKA implements and administers the support and funding measures with a yearly budget of more than 100 M€. Cooperation management services include technical and administrative assistance through all phases of collaborative projects. Strong emphasis is laid on technology transfer activities, such as conferences, initiation and management support of industrial working groups as well as installation of competence centres. PTKA (formerly PFT) was involved in the project management (PM) of numerous projects of the European Commission since the first RTD Framework Program e.g. CAD-I 1984-89, NIRO 1990-95, INTERROB 1990-95, ESPITI 1994-96. In continuity the PM group very intensively supported the preparation of proposals and the start of projects in the 5th and 6th RTD Framework Programs in close cooperation with the National Contact Point Group at PTKA for the 5th and 6th RTD Framework Programmes for production on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF). At the present time a large Network of Excellence (HySafe) has been managed administratively since 2003. A number of proposals with FZK PM activities are under negotiations or has been submitted to the Commission.

"; } if (document.layers) { document.layers.partnerText.innerHTML = sTexto; } else if (document.all) { document.all.partnerText.innerHTML = sTexto; } else if (document.getElementById) { document.getElementById("partnerText").innerHTML = sTexto; } } function abrirVentanaMore(sPartnerName) { top.consoleRef=window.open('',sPartnerName, 'width=550px,height=450px' +',menubar=0' +',toolbar=0' +',status=0' +',scrollbars=1' +',resizable=1') top.consoleRef.document.writeln( ''+sPartnerName+'' +'
' +obtenerContenido(sPartnerName)+'
' ) top.consoleRef.document.close() } function obtenerContenido(sPartnerName) { if (sPartnerName=='siemens') { sCadenaContenido='

SIEMENS AG, D


Type:   Industry
Country:   Germany
No. of Employess:   51.200
The SIEMENS Automation and Drives Group is directly involved in the project. But based on internal information flow and dissemination other groups within SIEMENS will be also reached. The SIEMENS Automation and Drives Group (A&D), Nuremberg, Germany, is the leading manufacturer in this field world-wide. Products supplied by A&D include standard products for the manufacturing and process industries and for the electrical installation industry as well as system solutions, for example for machine tools, and solutions for whole industries such as the automation of entire automobile factories or chemical plants. A&D also offers software for linking production and management (horizontal and vertical IT integration) and for optimising production processes. A&D employs 51,200 people world-wide and in fiscal year 2002 earned an operational profit of 723 million on sales of 8.6 billion and orders of 8.7 billion. Together with other departments of A&D like PLC and Motion Control, SIMATIC NET industrial communication is involved in the innovative technological aspects of the VAN project.
SIMATIC NET is a department within Automation and Drives providing a wide range of industrial communication products and solutions ranging from connectors, cables, network components up to powerful embedded communication devices and software for Industrial Ethernet and IT solutions. SIMATIC NET was one of the first supplier of Industrial Ethernet components for the factory floor to enable powerful communication for PLCs. Beside communication devices for AS-Interface, PROFIBUS, PROFInet and Industrial Ethernet including IT functionality for embedded systems like PLCs or network components, the wireless communication in industrial environment and mobile information devices like industrial web pad are in the product and development scope. Also the areas of Real-time Ethernet communication and telecontrol are covered.'; } else if (sPartnerName=='phoenix') { sCadenaContenido='

Phoenix Contact, D


Type:   Industry
Country:   Germany
No. of Employess:   450
Phoenix Contact Electronics GmbH is the R&D and production site of the business unit automation systems of Phoenix Contact GmbH & Co KG. Phoenix Contact is a medium size enterprise with 6100 employees world-wide in 2003. Phoenix develops, produces and markets world-wide a broad product spectrum of hardware and software components for the electrical and automation control engineering. For these products a set of services e.g. developer and user trainings for Automations systems is provided also. Approx. 15 years ago Phoenix began this with the development of the fieldbus system INTERBUS, which took over a prominent role, under the system guidance of Phoenix Contact, in different industries of manufacturing automation e.g. the automotive industry.
The existing knowledge of field communication network development and application, embedded system design, wireless communication and safety concepts will be used to contribute to the VAN project specification and prototype development with special focus on the usability of the VAN results in the manufacturing industry.
Phoenix is active in different national and international standardisation committees, e.g. DKE, CENELEC, IEC and ISO. In these committees Phoenix contributed to the specification and editing of different standards - e. g. IEC 61158 (fieldbus). Moreover Phoenix also is initial member of different industrial user groups, e.g. INTERBUS club, DRIVECOM and IAONA. This knowledge of standardisation at different levels will be used to contribute to the standardisation and dissemination activities of the VAN project.
Phoenix Contact has already experience with national and international R&D projects. E. g. a national project "FUNBUS" within the German frame program Production 2000, dealing with wireless technologies in industrial automation systems. Phoenix was involved in the IST framework 5 project "PABADIS", where Phoenix, besides the technical work, was responsible for the IMS project coordination task.'; } else if (sPartnerName=='schneider') { sCadenaContenido='

Schneider Electric GmbH, D


Type:   Industry
Country:   Germany
No. of Employess:   2000
SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC GmbH belongs to Schneider Electric, a global leading company in the automation and electrical distribution business with main development sites in Sophia Antipolis (France), Seligenstadt (Germany) and North Andover (United States, MA). It combines the Telemecanique, SquareD, Modicon and former AEG master brands of the parent company Schneider Electric Industries, France. The SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC INDUSTRIAL AUTOMATION brands offer its target industrial process end users and OEM customers superior products and services throughout their automation journey. Currently Schneider Electric Industries employing 83000 people world-wide and generated sale of around 8.8 billion Euro in 2003 through 13000 sales outlets in 130 countries. Key customers like Daimler Chrysler, Coca Cola, VW, Mars, Opel, Merck, General Motors, Ford, BASF, Thyssen, Burton are using the competencies and project experiences in the automation and electrical distribution business of Schneider Electric Industrial Automation. Innovative technologies like PC based control systems are developed and driven by Schneider as well as contributions to international standards for automation like IEC 61131 and IEC 61499. Further Schneider is leading in the combination of IT and industrial automation, in the usage of Web-based technology, Internet based protocols and in development of collaborative agent-oriented software for flexible control systems.'; } else if (sPartnerName=='fidia') { sCadenaContenido='

Phoenix Contact, D


Type:   Industry
Country:   Italy
No. of Employess:   340
FIDIA is one of the European leaders in manufacturing Numerical Controls and High Speed Milling Machines for dies and moulds making. The company has also developed and offers CAM modules suitable in particular for on line generation of part programs (HIMILL), and high performance servo drives. Fidia recently opened 2 company sites located in Naples and Bari (Italy) totally dedicated to research activities.
FIDIA is committed to developing solutions aiming at improving the NC and machine tools performances in several directions: Dynamics, Process Control, NC Architecture. Consequently, FIDIA is or has been participating in several research consortia. In particular, FIDIA was the prime contractor in the projects: HIQU (EP 6293), KERNEL II (BE 7423), SENC (ESSI 10491), DIAMOND (BE 4886), PSP-NC (ESSI 24060), REINDEER (IST 20288), SEC&TEC (GRD 10227), PENGUIN PC (IST 28152), OCEAN (IST 37394 ).
In addition, FIDIA participated in FAME (EP 5471), OPTIMAL (EP 8643), ELCANO (EP 25297), SIMON (EP 22417), IMS-SIMON (EP 26504), MW-1 (BE 1818), MOSYN (BE 1532), AUTOMAT (EP 22273), MOTION (BE 3424), SMART (GRD 10717) and other Projects.'; } else if (sPartnerName=='aucoteam') { sCadenaContenido='

AUCOTEAM GmbH, D


Type:   Industry
Country:   Germany
No. of Employess:   160
  • Nature of business: Planning and realisation of monitoring and Control systems, System integrator
  • Role in project: Centralised process Control of distributed technological Systems
  • Role in exploitation: Final design, prototyping realisation Role in project: Centralised process Control of distributed technological Systems
AUCOTEAM is an independent system integrator for projects of automation ? ranging from the first consultation to training and customer-services. Based on the know how of about 160 experienced, high qualified engineers, computer experts and skilled workers, the company guarantees efficient, user-friendly solutions and high flexibility in processing the Task. The focus of the activities of AUCOTEAM are the following sectors: industry, buildings, environment, public bodies and administrations. The high degree of professional competence of the specialist forms at the same time the basis for a various supply at innovation engineering and manufacturing services. It covers:
  • Project engineering and implementation and data communication plants,
  • Software engineering,
  • Tailor-made development, design as well as environmental and reliability tests,
  • Manufacturing services in the sheet metal processing and switch cabinet manufacturing.
The company works in the area of automation and data communication plants in the fields of measuring and control systems, process control systems and data communication. The department of software engineering develops products for automation among other things e.g. tele-control protocols, fieldbus technologies (LON, EIB, INTERBUS, CAN, PROFIBUS), products for administration solutions and for data base applications (Oracle, MS-SQL and other).
The company has an innovative engineering services for tailor-made hardware and software solutions as well as R&D services, for environmental tests and for training. Manufacturing services exists for thin sheet metal processing & casing manufacture and switch cabinet manufacturing. The company has a lot of experiences in the area of project management.'; } else if (sPartnerName=='tsa') { sCadenaContenido='

Teleport Sachsen-Anhalt GmbH, D


Type:   Industry
Country:   Germany
No. of Employess:   28
TSA is a services and applications developer and a strategic consultant focused on Information Society issues and the IT Security sector. Teleport has co-ordinated and participated in a number of European R&D projects developing and setting up state-of-the-art communication and information services, e-commerce platforms, clearing and billing systems, various communication infrastructures etc. TSA investigates and evaluates newly arising technologies early on and sets them in the framework of projects in a context of technical-economic and socio-economic use. These rest on a large variety of studies and of project and consultation activities for commercial and political institutions as well.
TELEPORT clients have been and continue to be the German Ministry of the Economy, Ministries of some regional governments in Germany and Spain; the European Commission, the European Parliament and international organisations such as RETI (European Association of Regions for Industrial Technology). Additionally, TSA’s operations department is running infrastructure and application services for a wide variety of industrial customers, applying its experience and knowledge in integration of new technologies and services in a commercial framework.'; } else if (sPartnerName=='heitec') { sCadenaContenido='

Heitec AG – branch Berlin, D


Type:   Industry
Country:   Germany
No. of Employess:   350
HEITEC was founded in 1984 in Erlangen by Richard Heindl and since then has developed into a leading European solution provider for automation and information technology. Early in 2000, a part of the HEITEC group changed its legal form to become stock corporation (Aktiengesellschaft). HEITEC offers complete, custom tailored solutions supplied by one and the same provider. HEITEC sees itself not only as a competent and efficient partner for large companies, but also smaller and medium-sized enterprises benefit more and more from HEITEC being in the lead as to the experience in this technological sector.
HEITEC is a company with about 350 employees and a turnover of 27 Mio €. It is located at nine places in Germany, three of them are situated in the new laender of Germany. HEITEC GmbH Auerbach as a member of the HEITEC group is also located in the new laender of Germany. In the project VAN the HEITEC branch in Berlin (eastern part) will participate.
HEITEC will work on the VAN prototype implementation and integration of the open platform for the manufacturing industry, e.g. ARINSTEIN in Poland as a manufacturer for machine tools. HEITEC will be the leader of the task 4.5 – Validation of Prototype Implementations. HEITEC has a lot of experience in the field of qualification and validation of software for machines and plants, especially in the sector of the chemistry/pharmaceutical industry. HEITEC also has experience in the development of complex network based applications.
HEITEC wants to integrate the results of VAN in his already realised Fault-Cause-Information System which is based on an distributed network and which needs an heterogeneous architecture to integrate additional functions.'; } else if (sPartnerName=='mcm') { sCadenaContenido='

MCM S.p.A., I


Type:   Industry
Country:   Italy
No. of Employess:   225
MCM was established in 1978 and it has had a constant growth during the years. At present, it has a staff of 225 people and the turnover of the year 2003 was of about 58 million Euro with an export quota of 30%.
In 1987 MCM incorporated its subsidiary company MCM FRANCE sarl for the sale and after-sale service in France, Belgium and Spain. The areas of Northern Europe (Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland) are supported by the subsidiary company MCM DEUTSCHLAND founded in 1996. In 1997 MCM USA Inc. was incorporated in Chicago and it gives the sales and after-sales support for North America.
MCM designs, produces, installs and services all its machining centers and production systems. The heart of MCM is the Designing, Research and Development Dept.: it is the place where ideas are realised into innovative solutions. The MCM production is based on three important operations: purchase of standard components, purchase of special components produced according to MCM design and assembly and quality control. The solution of the customer’s problems is the priority job for the after-sale dept. whose staff is of about 40 engineers.
The 10 engineers of the Software and Engineering dept. realise the software for the systems’ management; their latest product is the jFMX – java powered Flexible Manufacturing Executive: it is the basis for the integration of the production systems into the enterprise Web.
MCM production is based on a complete range of high quality horizontal axis machining centers, FMCs – flexible manufacturing cells and FMSs – flexible manufacturing systems. A series of standard automation modules complete the possibilities to configure the different systems according to customer’s needs. MCM also designs and produces its electrospindles, tool changing systems and rotary tables.
MCM supplies its machines to all productions areas where the requirements in terms of precision, speed, machining time and highly intensive exploitation of the hours/year resources are top priority objective.
Therefore, MCM’s leading sectors are: automotive industry, aerospace industry, molds, pneumatics, and mechanical industry.'; } else if (sPartnerName=='brno') { sCadenaContenido='

Brno University of Technology DCMI of FEEC, CZ


Type:   Higher Education, Research
Country:   Czech Republic
No. of Employess:   42
Brno University of Technology (BUT) is the second largest and the second oldest technical university in the Czech Republic. Providing Europe-oriented education is among important BUTs tasks the creation of a European university-education and research space. The Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication (FEEC) is the third largest faculty of BUT. The funding of research work at FEEC comes from three major sources: research projects and the research center, projects of the University Development Fund (FRV) and grants from the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic (GA CR).
The Faculty has four own research intentions (Resources, Accumulation and Optimisation of Electric Power Exploitation in Environmental Applications, Electronic Communication Systems and Technologies, Automation of Industrial Processes and Technologies, Microelectronic Systems and Technologies). Supported by BUT and Ministry of Education, a new multi-functional laboratory for testing new methods in automation was built at the Institute of Control, Measurement, and Instrumentation. The laboratory will be used for courses in one-chip computers, programmable PLC automata, distributed systems for process – and production control DCS, real-time control and process monitoring, C++ and Java programming, MATLAB and database modelling for the purposes of automatic control.
Together with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague the DCMI takes part in work of Research Center of Applied Cybernetics, which has excellence particularly in mobile robotic program, artificial intelligence and recently in research in advanced embedded and internet oriented control instrumentation as well as in theory and industrial application of control of hybrid systems.
The group of industrial automation (SKUPRA) of the Department of Control, Measurement and Instrumentation of the FEEC that will mostly solve research tasks in VAN project has competences in automation of production machines and lines and in automation of technological processes. The activities of the SKUPRA group members are thus oriented to real- time control, serial industrial communication buses and protocols, Internet based communication of smart devices as well as single smart sensors and actuators, in embedded systems development and applications. The excellence of the group was granted by the new 3 years research project (Industrial Bluetooth Wireless device bus for Automation), which is focused to the new communication and real-time technologies for mobile robots and platforms and for efficient data acquisition from production machines and lines.
According to the above specified competences the SKUPRA group of the DCMI FEEC BUT with a great background of other DCMI research capacity and competence will take part in following activities of VAN project solution:
  • state of the art and trend screening of recent IT in flexible production automation
  • requirements and unresolved Issues for Automation
  • application specific architecture profiles for open platform
  • providing of open platform pilot laboratory
  • specification of wireless communication for closed loop control
  • clock synchronised mechanism for wireless and wired
  • safety for Wireless Networks
  • safety specification, implementation and validation for car industry and mobile robotics
  • security for embedded devices and mobile robotics
  • low cost engineering tool concept design for real time systems
  • process Automation Test Environment - Prototype devices
  • training for integrators (focus on Eastern Europe states)
'; } else if (sPartnerName=='magdeburg') { sCadenaContenido='

University of Magdeburg, Center Verteilte Systeme CVS, D


Type:   Research, Higher Education
Country:   Germany
No. of Employess:   16
A working group within the Institute of Ergonomics, Manufacturing Systems and Automation (IAF) at the University of Magdeburg represents the Center Distributed Systems (CVS). The main competence of the CVS lies in the development of distributed control systems based on distributed intelligence, advanced communication technology, complex security technologies and real-time systems. A fully equipped research laboratory containing all available products for Real-Time Java (Siemens Sicomp, aJile and different implementations of the Real-Time Specification for Java), according real-time operating systems (different real-time implementations of Linux, QNX etc.) and plant simulation models are operated. CVS gained in-depth knowledge during the research work especially in real-time Ethernet, INDUSTRIAL Ethernet, application of UML, application of web-technologies in automation systems, application of agent systems and the usage of Plug-and- Play mechanisms.
The CVS has proven its competence in different aspects of distributed systems in different national and European projects. The most important projects are: “Total lifecycle web-integrated control (TORERO)” and “Plant automation based on distributed systems” (PABADIS), both funded by the EU under the IST programme and coordinated by the CVS.
Further on, the CVS manages the office of the Industrial Automation Open Networking Alliance e.V. (IAONA). This entails the active collaboration in different Technical Working Groups of IAONA, especially the JTWGs “Real-Time” and “Security”.
The CVS contributes to the following points of VAN:
  • Design of real-time networks for automation systems.
  • Complex security systems for automation system networks
  • Integration of automation system networks into enterprise networks
  • Design of object models representing automation systems
  • Engineering of automation systems
'; } else if (sPartnerName=='polimilan') { sCadenaContenido='

Politecnico di Milano, I


Type:   Research
Country:   Italy
No. of Employess:   440
Politecnico di Milano is the largest technical university in Italy and one of the largest in Europe. The Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione (DEI) is among the largest ones of the Politecnico di Milano as it has 150 faculties, about 80 junior researchers, 100 PhD students and an administrative and technical staff of 50 people. The DEI is devoted to innovative research and advanced education in the most important fields of information technology. DEI is responsible for bachelor/master/PhD curricula in electronics, computer engineering, control engineering and telecommunications, and the new one in automation engineering, started in 2001 and enrolling about 150 students. The DEI has been directly involved in more than one hundred EC research projects and has incomes for more then 3 million Euros each year from research contracts.'; } else if (sPartnerName=='ifak') { sCadenaContenido='

ifak Magdeburg, D


Type:   Research
Country:   Germany
No. of Employess:   50
The "Institut für Automation und Kommunikation" (ifak), founded in 1991, is a non-profit research institute with 50 employees, mainly graduated engineers, partly holding a PhD or working as University Professors, and in addition a number of guest scientists, students in practical training and diploma thesis students. The head of the institute is Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Peter Neumann. The main activities of the ifak aim at applied basic research and the solution of development tasks in the field of automation.
The activities of ifak regarding communication systems are in the research areas of development of communication protocols (e.g. PROFIBUS, PROFInet) including protocol description (formal protocol specification) and protocol implementation for embedded systems, application of telecommunication, wireless and Internet based protocols in automation as part of a virtual automation communication domain, investigation of new functions of Network Management in communication systems for automation (plug and play functions), security and safety related extensions to automation protocols and, development of test systems for interoperability tests (PROFIBUS DP and PA test lab and PROFInet Competence Centre (PCC) of the PROFIBUS User Organisation).
Based on the long term experiences of ifak in the field of formal specification our specialists have been ordered for national and international specification and standardisation work in the last years. Ifak essentially contributed to the further development of the international fieldbus standard IEC61158 by specifying the PROFInet communication protocol, and is presently specifying the real-time protocol PROFInet IO. Addressing the area of industrial wireless communication, the aim of the European project ”Rfieldbus” (IST-1999-11316) was to develop a high performance radio fieldbus, based on existing radio technologies and standardised fieldbus protocols, and also being apt for multimedia applications. Furthermore, a new technical committee headed by members of ifak was established within the VDI/VDE Society of Measurement and Automatic Control (GMA), which deals with the industrial usage of radio technology in automation systems.
The non-interrupted engineering of heterogeneous components based on common information models is a new quality in process control systems. The activities of ifak regarding Engineering are in the research areas (technologies) of Electronic Device Description Language (EDDL), Component Technologies (e.g. Field Device Tool - FDT, PROFInet), Function Blocks (e.g. IEC61499, IEC61131, IEC61804), and Profiles. The Brite EuRam Project Advanced Control Network (ACORN, BRPR-CT95-0117) provided a framework to integrate software engineering tools as a Function Block Editor, a device Editor, a Network Configuration Tool and a Simulation Tool. The ESPRIT Project Network Oriented Application Harmonisation (NOAH, EP26951) provided a architecture to access field devices in heterogeneous environments. The ITEA Project PROTEUS (01011) will provide a fully integrated platform that is able to support any broad e-maintenance strategy.
Within the VAN project ifak is mainly in charge for tasks that are dealing with specification. Employees of ifak have got experiences in specification of communication protocols, even for IEC standardisation.'; } else if (sPartnerName=='cartif') { sCadenaContenido='

CARTIF, E


Type:   Research
Country:   Spain
No. of Employess:   168
CARTIF is a Spanish Applied Research Centre involved on R&D&i and technology transfer activities. CARTIF also carries out activities of scientific technical education and diffusion to achieve efficient results and transfer to the end users. Taking advantage of the multidisciplinary skills and technological know-how of Valladolid University researchers, this non-profit organisation works towards the aim of transferring the latest technologies and methodologies into industry. The Centre is integrated in the Castilla and Leon Technology Centres Network and in the Science and Technology Spanish Interministerial Commission, keeping a close collaboration with the most representative organisations of regional and national industrial development: Castilla and Leon Development Agency, the Spanish Ministry of Science And Technology and the Innovation Programme of the European Commission. CARTIF is certified according to UNE EN ISO 9001:2000 and UNE EN ISO 14001:1996.
The Centre, which its core technological areas are robotics and advanced automation, has been and continues to be involved in research funded by a number of sources: both from Spanish government and European research programs, and collaborative efforts and strategic alliances with the University of Valladolid. In the last four years more than 120 projects have been carried out, 90% related to applied industrial research and the rest regarding reports, technical studies, auditing, training activities and technological dissemination. Currently is engaged in the development of seven European funded projects.
CARTIF has competences in distributed control and monitoring systems, GPRS and UMTS machine oriented developments and evaluation of socio-economic impact.'; } else if (sPartnerName=='fzk') { sCadenaContenido='

Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe GmbH (FZK), D


Type:   Research
Country:   Germany
No. of Employess:   3500
Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe GmbH (FZK)is an independent science and research institution in Germany with a staff of about 3500 employees. In the area of technology and the environment, the Centre devotes its attention to research and development work in the interest of the public. It is funded by the Federal Republic of Germany and the Land Baden-Württemberg and is a member of the Helmholtz Association of National Research Centres. Helmholtz Centres perform top-class research in strategic programmes in six core fields: Energy, Earth and Environment, Health, Key Technologies, Structure of Matter, Transport and Space.
As one organizational unit of Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe Projektträger Foprschungszentrum Karlsruhe (PTKA) works as a Project Management Agency in charge of preparing and managing programs in cooperation with the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Federal Ministry of Economy and Labour (BMWA) and the Land Baden-Wuertemberg and their Landesstiftung. PTKA implements and administers the support and funding measures with a yearly budget of more than 100 M€. Cooperation management services include technical and administrative assistance through all phases of collaborative projects. Strong emphasis is laid on technology transfer activities, such as conferences, initiation and management support of industrial working groups as well as installation of competence centres. PTKA (formerly PFT) was involved in the project management (PM) of numerous projects of the European Commission since the first RTD Framework Program e.g. CAD-I 1984-89, NIRO 1990-95, INTERROB 1990-95, ESPITI 1994-96. In continuity the PM group very intensively supported the preparation of proposals and the start of projects in the 5th and 6th RTD Framework Programs in close cooperation with the National Contact Point Group at PTKA for the 5th and 6th RTD Framework Programmes for production on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF). At the present time a large Network of Excellence (HySafe) has been managed administratively since 2003. A number of proposals with FZK PM activities are under negotiations or has been submitted to the Commission.'; } return sCadenaContenido; }