FieldComm Group receives Best Technology Award at Automation Expo 2017
Published on : Monday 30-11--0001
The FieldComm Group’s booth received the Best Technology award at the Automation Expo 2017, for its Field Device Integration (FDI) technology standard.
Selected by a prominent judging panel of industry executives and experts, FDI was chosen as the award winner from a pool of over 500 exhibitors. While announcing the award, Dr B R Mehta, Senior Vice President of Reliance Industries stated, “In the future we will no longer need to worry about the protocol that we use on the plant floor because FDI will enable simplified integration of all protocols to DCS, asset management, and mobile systems.”
“FDI enables a seamless evolution from existing device description languages to add capability and radically simplify getting field device data into hosts and the cloud. We are thrilled to receive recognition by a panel of industry executives and experts from the Automation Fair for this exciting new technology,” stated Ted Masters, President of FieldComm Group. “FDI technology is unique in that it dramatically simplifies integration of many field device protocols and exposure of information from those protocols in an open and standardised way.”
The FieldComm Group – a global standards-based organisation consisting of leading process end users, manufacturers, universities and research organisations that work together to direct the development, incorporation and implementation of new and overlapping technologies and serves as the source for FDI™ technology – is a regular participant at the Automation Expo and was present at the 2017 edition. Mr Richard Timoney, Chairman and CEO and Mr Paul Sereiko, Director of Marketing, FieldComm Group were present during the event in Mumbai. The organisation believes the Automation Expo is an ideal platform to showcase the cutting-edge technology, the advancements, control systems, products, and services of Foundation Fieldbus, FDI and HART IP and Wireless HART.
The FieldComm Group Managing Committee for India comprises of Mr Anupam Srivastava (Emerson), Thampy Matthew (Pepperl+Fuchs) and Harish Wadhwa (Chemtrols), all veterans of the automation world. Mr Anupam Srivastava is the Chairman of the India Committee.
“Automation Expo 2017 was hugely successful event with many technology and service providers displayed not only latest technology there was also strong display of “Future in Process Automation. We are happy to be recognised by panel of industry experts for new FDI technology, a unique dramatically simplified integration of many field device protocols and exposure of information from those protocols in an open and standardised way for improved usability experience for end-users, integrated with wireless HART as foundation for IIoT,” said Mr Srivastava.
The main highlight of the FieldComm Booth at the expo this year was working demos of Foundation Fieldbus – Live Process, FDI Demo and WirelessHART. A series of 15-minute presentations were held the booth throughout the day for the benefit of instrumentation professionals and also all those interested visitors. A Wall of FieldComm Devices had some devices on display from FieldComm group member in India.
The news of the award continues FDI’s momentum in the rapidly evolving market for products and services surrounding Industry 4.0 and the IIoT, including:
- 2010 – FDI Specification team included the OPC-UA information model for devices into the FDI architecture
- April 2015 – FDI selected for Information and Functional layer of Industry 4.0 Reference Architecture model
- July 2015 – First FDI enabled product released
- February 2016 – FDI receives NAMUR recommendation (NE 105) as preferred integration technology
- January 2017 – FieldComm Group begins registration program for FDI device packages and hosts, and
- 3Q 2017 – Release of FDI Technical Specs 1.1 and FDI IDE and Common Host Components 1.2.1.
FieldComm Group’s mission is to develop, manage and promote global standards for integrating digital devices into automation system architectures while protecting process-automation investments in HART® and FOUNDATION™ Fieldbus communication technologies. Membership is open to anyone interested in the use of the technologies.
Field Device Integration or FDI technology solves the problem of integrating field devices with the multitude of networks, operating systems, and control systems used in the process industries. FDI technology has been developed and supported by the automation industry’s leading technology foundations and suppliers. With FDI the advantages of FDT® are combined with those of EDDL in a single, scalable solution. FDI takes account of the various tasks over the entire lifecycle for both simple and the most complex devices, including configuration, commissioning, diagnosis and calibration.