Patent ID: 7930041

Claim:
An industrial control system comprising a set of spatially separated control elements interconnected on at least one network, the control elements including at least two of: (i) a programmable controller having a cycle defining repeated use of data within a control program; (ii) a network adapter having a cycle defining repeated communication with control elements on the network; (iii) an I/O adapter connected to the network having a cycle defining repeated communication with I/O modules having electrical connections to sensors and actuators effecting control of a controlled process; and (iv) an I/O module communicating with a controlled process having a cycle defining repeated exchange of data with the controlled process; and the industrial control system comprising: (i) a global clock system providing a synchronized timebase at the control elements; (ii) a profiler defining a master cycle initiation time based on a cycle of a given control element from the set of spatially separated control elements with reference to the synchronized timebase and providing corresponding cycle initiation times to other control elements from the set of spatially separated control elements; (iii) a synchronization system receiving the cycle initiation times and synchronizing execution of cycles of the control elements based on the cycle initiation times and the synchronized timebase so that data is transmitted from the other control elements to the given control element to arrive at the given control element substantially at a start of the cycle of the given control element.