Fieldbus Foundation scolds anti-IEC 61158 group

Fieldbus Foundation (FF) condemned Sept. 10 efforts by some European controls and instrumentation suppliers to defeat the proposed Data Link Layer (DDL) and Application Layer (AL) documents in the IEC 61158 international fieldbus standard, which are now in balloting by the IEC SC65C/WG6 fieldbus committee as a Final Draft International Standard. FF President John Pittman says a vigorous campaign against IEC 61158 is being waged by “a small group of German controls manufacturers with a vested interest in defeating the IEC standard and securing adoption of the CENELEC EN 50170 specification as a worldwide standard.” FF says CENELEC EN 50170 is actually three standards, not one. Mr. Pittman added that FF is considering legal action is response to false and misleading statements made by IEC 61158’s opponents. For input from Profibus on IEC 61158, see CE , July 1998, p.2 or CE International , Sept. 1998, p.20.

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