PNO BACKS WIRELESS COOPERATION TEAM: The PROFIBUS Nutzerorganisation (PNO), PTO's sister organization in Germany, is backing an "unprecedented" initiative aimed at driving forward wireless standards for automation. The Fieldbus Foundation (FF), HART Communication Foundation (HCF) and PNO, have formed a Wireless Cooperation Team (WCT) to collaborate on wireless technology in the manufacturing and process industries. The new project is modeled on the organization’s successful collaboration on Electronic Device Description Language (EDDL) and is another step towards delivering consistent functionality to end users.

The introduction of wireless technology into the manufacturing and process industries will require suppliers, end users, and international standards bodies to address technical issues related to wireless applications. FF, HART, and PNO are working together in the interest of establishing a common, open standard. The intent of the collaboration is to facilitate the acceptance of wireless technology.

The three organizations have agreed to develop a specification for a common interface to a wireless gateway. The organizations have also agreed to base their work on the WirelessHART™ technology of the HART Communication Foundation and the emerging ISA SP 100.11a standard. The project shall develop use cases, requirements and specifications for wireless communication with intelligent field devices in process measurement and control applications in the Automation Industries. The goal of the cooperative project is to create a common specification while ensuring complete compatibility with the existing wired versions of each participant’s technology.

As was done with their EDDL cooperation, the three organizations have also agreed to develop a common set of compliance guidelines for incorporation into their respective product registration processes.

WORKSHOPS AND SEMINARS - UPDATE: There's still time to attend one of our one day training classes, which continue into December before taking a well earned break until the New Year.The 2008 schedule is now available with over 20 free classes planned. More will likely be added; watch the website for updates. Full details here.

Special Note: attendees receive a certificate for 5.5 Professional Development Hours (PDH). And as a bonus, the PTO raffles a week-long Certified Network Engineer Class (a $2695 value) at each PROFIBUS and PROFINET event!

ALERT: A PROFItech certified PROFINET engineer class has been set for Detroit in January. Details here

PROFINET DEVELOPER WORKSHOP: The PTO's 2007 series of free PROFINET Developer Workshops reached its finale with a visit to Boston in October. Carl Henning, workshop leader commented: "Our goal has been to provide PROFINET developers with a wide range of technical information, including PROFINET vendor presentations, to help them select the best tools to use. We've managed to reach a much larger number of people than expected and from the results I can tell you that 2008 should see exciting PROFINET products emerging from several industry majors."

Among those supporting the events has been ARC Advisory Group whose Harry Forbes spoke about the growth potential of Industrial Ethernet. Exhibitors included: Hilscher North America, Inc., HMS Industrial Networks, Inc., IXXAT, Inc., Real Time Automation, Siemens Energy & Automation, Softing North America and Woodhead Industries.

UPDATE: Four Developer Workshops are already in the pipeline for 2008.

The workshops were entirely free of cost or obligation. Watch out for the 2008 workshops. Watch the PTO web site for details.

ERTEC, sometimes seen as an IRT-focused device for high end Motion Control applications, is actually an all-purpose chip for any PROFINET application. It has conventional ‘store and forward’ capability as well as the ‘cut through’ needed for IRT, and it also has enough processing power to include the PROFINET stack, and a modest application too.

This flexibility, plus the price drop, makes ERTEC a highly competitive option for almost any type of end device. Embedding ERTEC means one product type can meet a variety of applications across the real-time spectrum so in many cases the development of multiple product types is no longer necessary.

ERTEC is available in a 2-port version with the Ethernet PHY, and a 4-port PCI board-based version intended for motion controllers. Embedding a 2-port version in an end device means that devices can be 'daisy-chained' instead of ‘star connected’ like most Industrial Ethernet devices. This removes the need for external switches and restores the single-cable benefits of fieldbus. Both factors make a PROFINET network easier, simpler, faster and cheaper to install and operate than other Industrial Ethernet solutions. In time more than 90% of external network switches may be eliminated, believes PI. A side-effect will be that counting installed Industrial Ethernet nodes will require a different strategy.

There's an ever-widening availability of PROFINET-enabling components. Siemens, Softing, Hilscher and Woodhead are just some of the companies offering development hardware, software and chips. The PIC in North America can provide development help and of course the PTO's own series of Developers Workshops is a good source of information about technologies and supplier support.

PROFINET COOPERATION ANNOUNCED: ABB Automation and Phoenix Contact have agreed to work together on PROFINET for the process industries. Phoenix Contact-subsidiary KW Software will take lead role for the technical integration of PROFINET technology into ABB field devices. The common objective is to strengthen and to develop PROFINET as a global industrial standard within Process Automation (ABB) and Factory Automation (Phoenix Contact). Peter Wendt, chief R&D officer Control Products of ABB Automation said: “With Phoenix Contact as a partner we expect excellent opportunities to meet even better the current and future customer requirements of intelligent field devices”.

ISA INVOLVEMENT: PTO Executive Director Mike Bryant attended an ISA chapter meeting in Raleigh in October to present the case for PROFIBUS and PROFINET. Deputy Director Carl Henning will do similarly on November 13th when he visits the ISA's LA chapter. More info on that date here. PTO hopes to deliver further presentations to ISA chapters in the future. At ISA EXPO in October, Mike Aldridge and Carl provided an overview of PROFIBUS and PROFINET as one of the technical sessions. There were about 35-40 attendees. More about the EXPO here.

MORE THAN MY BLOGS WORTH?: Carl Henning recently received high praise indeed from Automation World's Gary Mintchell. FUD has been a recurring theme of Carl's PROFIblog and in a recent revival Gary responded with an item wondering why FUD is deemed so necessary by certain vendors. PROFIblog continues to cover topics of all types as Carl flexes his typing muscles in ever more interesting ways. His recent visit to Beiling for a PI meeting somehow morphed out of a PROFINET one day training event in Detroit, where more people than had registered turned up (113 actually) to confound Carl's unsophisticated algorithm for estimating how many lunches to order. Elsewhere he rants about never, ever, using a fieldbus. Isn't the truth always stranger than fiction?

Read how PROFIBUS and PROFINET are helping end users be successful around the world:

BRAZILIAN SUGAR AND ALCOHOL UPGRADES: A new White Paper has been published here

PROFINET HELPS TOBACCO PLANT :
Founded in 1939, the Xuzhou Tobacco Factory, located in the eastern province of Jiangsu, is one of the largest cigarette factories in China with fixed assets of 1.7 billion RMB (around $125M) and an annual production yield of 0.5 million cartons of cigarettes. The company was interested in implementing an innovative automation solution that would offer the flexibility to produce a larger number of product variants. In addition, customer system requirements called for easy traceability of production processes and an overall reduction of production costs. Siemens provided a PROFINET-based solution which included 10 SIMATIC S7-400 CPUs with SIMATIC NET CP 443-1 Advanced Ethernet communication processors and over 60 SIMATIC ET 200S stations with integrated PROFINET interfaces. WinCC HMI stations with SIMATIC Panel PCs and CP 1616 were also installed. SCALANCE X-400 industrial switches form the backbone of the network. Using PROFINET CBA (Component Based Automation) whereby modules of automation not only provided fast engineering but also the necessary production flexibility. By shortening production duration and requirements, the new solution resulted in substantial cost reductions. The increased system flexibility offered by the modularity of the PROFINET CBA solution made faster production adaptation to market requirements possible. Moreover, the system now enables real-time recording of all aspects of the production processes.

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PROFIBUS SMOOTHS DIESEL ENGINE MANUFACTURE:
Cummins, the world's largest independent manufacturer of diesel engines, builds over 62,000 engines for customers in Europe, Middle East, Africa and the Far East in 2006, and employs 1,000 people at its Darlington, UK, plant. There are more than 2,000 possible engine variants and Cummins recently decided to upgrade a large part of their assembly and pressure test process. Engines had previously been transported through the manufacturing process by a combination of overhead chain conveyor, powered floor conveyor and an AGV system. This was all replaced by an EMS (Electric Monorail System) during a two week shutdown in 2006. The EMS comprises 600 meters of overhead monorail, 50 carriers, 14 switchpoints, 3 lift units, 1 rotate unit, 34 assembly stations and 4 pressure test stations. There are a number of PROFIBUS DP networks in the system, providing communication to RFID devices, HMI operator panels, maintenance touch panels, LJU carrier controllers and distributed I/O. These networks are also used to interface between the S7-317DP PLC's which control the system. All fifty carriers have a Moby data tag attached. This stores an engine's build attributes and determines its route through the system. At each of the assembly and test stations there is a Moby SLG read/write device which communicates the engine data and operational status back to one of the S7-317DP PLC's controlling the system. There are three production pressure test lanes and one repair test lane. Each carrier has an onboard LJU controller which constantly reads an encoded rail to determine its position in the system. Status and Command words are received and sent to each carrier from the S7-317DP PLC again via PROFIBUS DP. There are six color touch panel HMI's on the line, used for pressure test control and display and for maintenance functions such as alarms and manual functions. At every assembly station an OP77A HMI panel allows the operator to raise and lower the engine to a suitable working position, to offload engines to the floor, to reload engines into the system and to release an engine to the next station when work is complete. When engines are offloaded or reloaded the RFID tag is updated to reflect its new status. The OP77A was chosen because of its PROFIBUS connectivity and also because of it's alphanumeric keypad, which is used to enter engine serial numbers. The rotate unit accepts engines from one of two input lanes and delivers them to one of two pressure test lanes. In the year since the system was installed, production rates have increased from 220 engines per day to 350 engines per day. The system was designed and built by Cleveland Systems Engineering Limited in co-operation with Trackfit Engineering Services, who designed and installed the supporting steelwork and mechanical elements.