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Toyota to employ EtherCAT technology in factories

Toyota has selected EtherCAT as its Industrial Ethernet technology of choice and will employ EtherCAT in its new factories around the world.

The announcement was made by Morihiko Ohkura, General Manager of the Production Engineering Innovation Division at Toyota.

“We have conducted thorough analysis and evaluation to compare various industrial Ethernet technologies. I believe the performance, determinism and simple wiring characteristics of EtherCAT, in addition to its openness, best fit with the needs of Toyota to evolve production systems with Industrial IoT concepts,” he said.

The decision to standardise on EtherCAT also factors in the latest addition to the technology, EtherCAT P, according to the Ohkura.

“The concept to integrate communication and power lines perfectly matches our lean production philosophy, the Toyota Production System. Simply put, the fewer cables the better,” he said.

“While still in preparation to become an ETG specification, Toyota is prepared to actively collaborate with Beckoff Automation, the inventor of EtherCAT and EtherCAT P, in order to smoothly make the new technology available to us and the rest of the community.”

EtherCAT is an Industrial Ethernet technology with high performance, low cost, ease of use and a flexible topology, according to the EtherCAT technology group.

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