PROFINET in process automation – application profile completed

06 December 2010

PROFIBUS & PROFINET International (PI) has achieved another important milestone for PROFINET, following the completion of the PROFINET for Process Automation application profile. As a result, PROFINET is now ideally suited for both manufacturing and process automation, claims PI.

Process automation has stringent requirements for reliability and availability. For example, plants must produce 24 hours a day, 365 days a year without interruption, and this must often be sustained for make improvements to the production process. The causes of errors must be identifiable, regardless of the complexity of the sensors and actuators used. Another challenge is the large number of signals in a plant, which typically number up to 100,000.

These requirements identified four primary aspects that were incorporated in the new profile: Integration of existing fieldbuses; configuration in run; time synchronization and time stamping; and scalable redundancy.

Manufacturers can now start to implement these functions into PROFINET products for process automation applications.

Relevant basic mechanisms underlying the ‘“PROFINET for Process Automation’ application profile are already included in PROFINET Specification V2.3, that was released in time for SPS/IPC/DRIVES 2010 in November. In addition to the new process automation-relevant specifications, the new version of the PROFINET Specification also includes specifications for high performance.


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