The five major automation foundations (FDT Group, Fieldbus Foundation, HART Communication Foundation, PROFIBUS & PROFINET International, and OPC Foundation) have developed a single common solution for field device integration (FDI). These foundations decided to combine efforts and form a joint company. The new company is named FDI Cooperation.
This was made official when all the foundation executives signed contract documents in Karlsruhe, Germany, at the end of September (Fig. 1). The FDI Cooperation will be headed by a board of managers comprised of representatives from the involved organizations, as well as managers of global automation suppliers including ABB, Emerson, Endress+Hauser, Honeywell, Invensys, Siemens and Yokogawa. Hans-Georg Kumpfmüller of Siemens will serve as chairman of the board. Achim Laubenstein of ABB has been nominated as executive director.
The purpose of the organization is:
• To complete the standardization of FDI under the International Electrical Commission
• Managing the FDI specification
• Finalizing the FDI tool kits for system and device manufacturers.
FDI Cooperation originated from efforts at the EDDL Cooperation Team (ECT) to accelerate deployment of the FDI solution, which originated at the 2007 Hanover Fair. Since then, the project has carefully shaped the technology direction for the converged FDI solution. FDI is a unified solution for the entire range of field devices, from simple to the most advanced, for the various tasks associated with all phases of their life cycle such as configuration, commissioning, diagnostics and calibration. HP
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Fig. 3. Leaders from the five main automation foundations
sign on the dotted line to create a new company called
FDI Cooperation. |