Manufacturing Automation Protocol (MAP) was a
computer network
A computer network is a collection of communicating computers and other devices, such as printers and smart phones. In order to communicate, the computers and devices must be connected by wired media like copper cables, optical fibers, or b ...
standard released in 1982 for interconnection of devices from multiple manufacturers. It was developed by
General Motors
General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. The company is most known for owning and manufacturing f ...
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, mainly by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machine ...
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, or simply Boeing (), is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product support s ...
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 198 ...
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 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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