PROFIBUS hits 20 million

It has been announced that more than 20 million PROFIBUS nodes are now on the market around the world. This means that the doubling of installed nodes from 10 to 20 million predicted to occur by the end of 2007 has already been achieved.

According to PROFIBUS & PROFINET International (PI), this figure demonstrates the significance of PROFIBUS for all companies that supply products and solutions for industrial automation, and confirms the benefit of PROFIBUS as an important basis for the economic success of these companies on various markets.

Edgar Küster, PI Chairman: “We are continuing to attend to the constant growth of the world’s most accepted fieldbus system.

At the same time, we are also smoothing the path for a simple changeover to PROFINET. With the simultaneous availability of PROFIBUS and PROFINET solutions, the customer can freely decide when the right point for him to change over has come.”

PROFINET targets process

Meanwhile, the working group “DCS Requirements” of PI has defined the requirement profile for PROFINET in process automation, reflecting the many needs of users of a plantwide communication system.

As part of the procedure a catalog with about 100 requirements was drawn up and then adopted after reviewed by PI marketing working groups (WG) and adopted by them. NAMUR (International User Association of Automation Technology in Process Industries) was also incorporated into the review.

In order that the strengths of PROFINET industrial Ethernet could also be utilized in process automation, says PI, it is necessary to check if and which extensions of today’s standards are required. Central issues are device integration, maintenance and diagnosis, fieldbus integration, data flow, time stamping, time synchronization and redundancy.

The specification drafts are expected to be ready in spring 2008 and available for the development of future products for PROFINET in process automation after review. The complete system functionality is expected to be available by the beginning of 2009.