November 6, 2008: The FDI (Field Device Integration) team continues their efforts to achieve a common solution for field device integration. The team has successfully worked over the past 18 months identifying use cases that encompass all facets of plant operations: from startup and commissioning; to ongoing maintenance activities and plant operations. This team’s efforts also included drafting an architecture concept that meets the needs of both technologies as they are migrated to a common standard. Both the draft architecture concept and the complete inventory of use case analysis have been completed due to the close cooperation among key global process control suppliers; including ABB, Emerson, Invensys, Rockwell Automation, Siemens, and Yokogawa.
Future efforts will be focused on completing two remaining documents. The first is a functional specification which will detail how the benefits of EDDL, FDT, and the OPC Unified Architecture will be combined. Release of this draft functional specification is planned for February 2009. Lastly, a comprehensive technical specification will be published.
EDDL Cooperation Team (ECT)
In 2003, the three leading field device foundations (Fieldbus Foundation, HART Communication Foundation and PROFIBUS Nutzer-organisation) signed a cooperative agreement to develop a common specification for graphical visualization and persistent data storage enabled by Electronic Device Description Language. All three of the organizations utilize EDDs for parameterization and description of their devices. In 2004, OPC joined the cooperation team. With EDDL, an established IEC standard, it made sense for the OPC specification to base their data structure on that same standard and work with the organizations to develop a standard inFDT terface to the Unified Architecture. The four organizations signed an agreement in 2004 to cooperate in the development of that interface.
In April 2007 the FDT Group joined the ECT on the basis of a technical agreement to jointly develop a new common standard for device integration. The Steering Committee is comprised of the presidents of each of the 5 foundations plus one representative from each organization’s membership. Hans-Georg Kumpfmueller is chairman of the committee.
About the FDT Group AISBL
The FDT Group AISBL is a non-profit corporation consisting of over 60 leading process and factory automation companies worldwide whose major purpose is to provide an open and non proprietary interface for the integration of field devices with engineering, automation and asset management systems. In this environment, end users, manufacturers, universities and research organizations are working together to develop the technology, provide development tools, support and training, coordinate field trials and demonstrations, and enable product interoperability.
