Manufacturing Automation Protocol (MAP) was a
computer network
A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...
standard released in 1982 for interconnection of devices from multiple manufacturers. It was developed by
General Motors
The General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is the largest automaker in the United States and ...
to combat the proliferation of incompatible communications standards used by suppliers of
automation
Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines ...
products such as
programmable controllers.
[J. David Irwin ''The industrial electronics handbook'',CRC Press, 1997 ,
Chapter 19] By 1985 demonstrations of interoperability were carried out and 21 vendors offered MAP products. In 1986 the
Boeing
The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and ...
corporation merged its ''Technical Office Protocol'' with the MAP standard, and the combined standard was referred to as "MAP/TOP". The standard was revised several times between the first issue in 1982 and MAP 3.0 in 1987, with significant technical changes that made interoperation between different revisions of the standard difficult.
Although promoted and used by manufacturers such as General Motors, Boeing, and others, it lost market share to the contemporary
Ethernet
Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1 ...
standard and was not widely adopted. Difficulties included changing protocol specifications, the expense of MAP interface links, and the speed penalty of a token-passing network.
[M. A. Laughton and D. J. Warne ''Electrical Engineers Reference Book 16th Edition'', Newnes,London 2003 , Chapter 16 "Programmable Controllers" page 44] The
token bus network
Token bus is a network implementing a Token Ring protocol over a ''virtual ring'' on a coaxial cable. A token is passed around the network nodes and only the node possessing the token may transmit. If a node doesn't have anything to send, the t ...
protocol used by MAP became standardized as IEEE standard 802.4 but this committee disbanded in 2004 due to lack of industry attention.
References
Industrial automation
Computer networks
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