More than 150 delegates and presenters attended the PI International Conference 'Excellence in Automation' in March, held to celebrate the 20th anniversary of PROFIBUS.

The prestigious ZKM Center for Arts and Media was the venue for nearly two days of presentations about PROFIBUS, PROFINET and IO-LINK. Plenty of emphasis was placed on the life cycle advantages of the latest 3.02 profile for PROFIBUS PA, which brings major benefits for process plant operators.

A press conference preceding the main event heard several important announcements, including news of the latest node counts, a statement about a new wireless standard for sensors and actuators and an Active Energy Management profile for PROFINET known as PROFIenergy. Fuller details are in PROFINEWS North America Issue 25. It was also announced that Emerson Process Management had joined PNO in Germany.

Professor Klaus Bender of itm, one of the godfathers of PROFIBUS, opened formal proceedings with a reprise of progress. He concluded by saying that with 30 million installed devices PROFIBUS had become the "undisputed" market leader. "If you take an average value of €1000 per device, the total represents a market value of €50 Billion, not counting any services or engineering costs involved," he said.

Only digital fieldbuses can deliver true horizontal integration of components on the factory floor, and vertical integration into MES, he continued. "Fieldbus is the enabler for economic production even in high salary countries such as Germany," he concluded.

Day 1

The first formal session of Day 1 was dominated by PROFIBUS PA, and life cycle costs and Endress+Hauser, Elcon and Siemens were speakers. After lunch James Powell kept delegates awake with stories of his cat in a session entitled 'Engineering and Integration'. James, from Siemens Miltronic in Canada, used the example of his cat Miss Kitty - who cost only $5 to acquire but $800 to ‘run’ in her first year alone - to illustrate the impact of life cycle costs on fieldbus networks. (PS: James has a nice video about the Total Cost of Ownership for PROFIBUS on YouTube.)

James also gave away copies of his new book on PROFIBUS PA called 'Catching the Process Fieldbus'. Order James' book here (look for the banner).

Parallel sessions were held in an adjacent hall, and IO-LINK received most attention during the first session. Safety in both Factory and Process environments with PROFIsafe were featured later.

Day 2

Day 2 focused on PROFINET, with TMG TE, Phoenix Contact and Siemens contributing. Wireless dominated the afternoon, while over in the parallel session, topics included diagnostics, trouble-shooting and maintenance.

The afternoon began with two significant end user presentations. First, Michael Pelz of Clariant covered key PA topics while Mr Jürgen Kübler of Daimler, part of the AIDA automotive group, showed delegates how energy demand varies in an active manufacturing line. Even at rest, 20kWh is being consumed!!! (see photo above).

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