Spring 2012 Fieldbus Report Available for Download!

In the Spring 2012 edition of our twice yearly Fieldbus Report, Fieldbus Foundation President, Rich Timoney, reflects on a report offered by Ronaldo Magalhaes from Petrobras, where the company projects $224 billion in new capital spending to develop new reserves. “Just as Foundation Fieldbus is going to be a big part of Petrobras’ future automation strategy, it has gained strong acceptance throughout Latin America, India, and other developing regions,” Timoney says. This dovetails with market analysis from ARC Advisory Group that reckons Foundation Fieldbus technology accounted for nearly 75% of the total digital process fieldbus market in 2011.

Here are some additional items you’ll find in this edition:

The 2012 Fieldbus Foundation General Assembly drew nearly 250 suppliers and end users to São Paulo, Brazil, last March for three days of reports, case studies, exhibits, and a demonstration of the new Foundation for Remote Operations Management (ROM) technology. Users and suppliers are encouraged by an uptick in capital spending in critical markets.

Last December, editors from a variety of industry publications gathered at Lee College in Baytown, Texas, for a technology demonstration of the Foundation for ROM initiative, incorporating multiple wired and wireless networking protocols. Larry O’Brien, FF global marketing manager, contends this technology will be critical to the rapidly growing remote operations management market segment.

The Foundation Development Services Provider (DSP) Program has qualified its first member company, Softing Industrial Automation. This program evaluates vendors to ensure that they have the capabilities, experience, and general know-how to support FF development projects. Qualified providers can streamline the certification process and ensure a better outcome.

The list of Foundation Fieldbus events is growing and covering the earth through the rest of 2012. From Romania, to Texas, to Indonesia, the offerings of seminars, road shows, forums, and training sessions have something for everyone, and just about everywhere. Check out the schedule.

Industrial research firms ARC Advisory Group and Frost & Sullivan, have both published studies related to fieldbus markets and market shares. The two studies, taken together, point to the large share that FF holds in the process fieldbus market, and to ongoing growth in related markets. The bottom line is that FF deployments will grow in number and importance for many years to come.

If you’ve ever fallen into a communication gap between your control system and field devices, you will appreciate that development of the Field Device Integration (FDI) specification is moving ahead thanks to support from a group of critical stakeholders. Beginning with comprehensive and rigorous use case requirements, the organization has laid out an approach that support communication going ahead with backward compatibility for existing installations.

From all parts of the world and a growing list of industries, take a look at the roll call of new and truly massive FF deployments. With 68% of all new industrial automation projects in process industries using FF to some extent, the list of projects is long and impressive.

The number and variety of Fieldbus Foundation registered devices is continuing to grow with new additions from all segments of the automation market. The registration process includes rigorous testing of critical elements of the technology, including host systems, field devices, and physical layer components. Here are some of the latest additions, plus some highlights of new product releases.
Click here to access the Spring 2012 Fieldbus Report.

Spring 2012 Fieldbus report on Control Engineering Web Site