Bad Neuenahr, Germany (8 November, 2017) – Today, at the 2017 NAMUR General Assembly Mr. Ted Masters, President and CEO, FieldComm Group and Mr. Thoralf Schulz, Chairman, FieldComm Group presented an update on FieldComm Group technologies and their alignment with NAMUR recommendations and Industrie 4.0. Below is a summary of the press conference:
FieldComm Group began operations in January 2015 as a new entity which combined the assets and membership of the former Fieldbus Foundation and the former HART Communication Foundation.
In June of that year ownership of the Field Device Integration (FDI) standard was transferred from a consortium of Process Automation systems suppliers to both FieldComm Group and PROFIBUS/PROFINET International.
FieldComm Group, with more than 340 global members, is the owner and driver of major process automation industry standards.
FDI Technology Update
With the assistance of many member companies and over 120 active members of the Integration Working Group, all elements of FDI that are required to bring products to market are now complete, including:
During the past two years FieldComm Group and PROFIBUS/PROFINET International have completed 3 plug-fests where devices from 18 suppliers, representing 6 protocols were evaluated for interoperability with 9 different FDI host platforms.
FieldComm Group’s test lab in Austin, Texas is currently testing initial device packages and expects to award registration of first devices prior to the end of 2017. Additional device packages and hosts will be registered in 2018.
To provide users and systems with easier access to the latest registered device packages, FieldComm Group is building an online repository for device packages. When complete, users will be able to find and download packages, and systems will be able to subscribe to automatic updates via the repository package, much like Windows PC’s are updated today.