FDI Cooperation, LLC: A new company to support the FDI technology is founded

FDT Group, Fieldbus Foundation, HART Communication Foundation, Profibus & Profinet International, and OPC Foundation launch a company to manage ongoing development work on FDI, the common solution for device integration.

September 27, 2011

The five major automation foundations: FDT Group, Fieldbus Foundation, HART Communication Foundation, Profibus & Profinet International, and OPC Foundation have developed a single common solution for Field Device Integration (FDI). These foundations decided to combine their efforts and form a joint company under the banner FDI Cooperation, LLC (a limited liability company under U.S. law). This was made formal by all representatives signing the contract documents in Karlsruhe, Germany, September 26. The new corporation will be headed by a board of managers, which is composed of the representatives of the involved organizations, as well as managers of global automation suppliers including ABB, Emerson, Endress+Hauser, Honeywell, Invensys, Siemens, and Yokogawa. Hans-Georg Kumpfmüller of Siemens will serve as chairman of the board. Achim Laubenstein of ABB has been nominated as executive director.

The new organization has three main tasks:

• Completing the standardization of FDI under IEC (International Electrical Commission)
• Managing the FDI specification, and
• Finalizing the FDI tool kits for system and device manufacturers.

FDI Cooperation originated from efforts at the EDDL Cooperation Team (ECT) to accelerate deployment of the FDI solution, which was kicked-off at the 2007 Hanover Fair. Since then, the project has carefully shaped the technology direction for the converged FDI solution. FDI is a unified solution for simple as well as the most advanced field devices, and for tasks associated with all phases of their life cycle such as configuration, commissioning, diagnostics, and calibration.

Read a more detailed discussion of the new technology, its background, and how it will likely be implemented.

The FDI Cooperation Website is still being developed.

www.fdi-cooperation.com

Edited by Peter Welander, pwelander@cfemedia.com