PROFIBUS Technology and Application

Commitment We are and will remain the world's leading organization in the field of digital networking for industrial and process automation, serving our customers, our members and the press with the best solutions , benefits and information. We are committed to setting and protecting the standards for open communication and control in the automation and process market. Introduction From the outset, the field of automation has been subject to continuous change. Not so long ago, this change was limited to the production area of a company. In production , the implementation of fieldbus technology has meant considerable innovation, enabling the migration from centralized to decentralized automation systems. This has been the PROFIBUS objective for more than 10 years. In those 10 years PROFIBUS has become the world market leader in fieldbus technology. In spite of the outstanding success of recent years, PROFIBUS development continues with undiminished enthusiasm and energy. Initially the focus was on communication technology. Current activities center around system integration, engineering and, in particular, the application profiles. These profiles have made PROFIBUS the only fieldbus that provides comprehensive both factory and process automation. Additionally, Information Technology (IT) increasingly determines development in today´s world of automation. Modern fieldbus systems have adopted IT principles and are achieving greater consistency with the corporate management level. In this respect, industrial automation is following the development trends of the office world, where IT has long since left its mark, radically transforming infrastructure , systems and processes. The integration of information technology in the world of automation opens up many new prospects for global data communication between automation systems. In pursuit of this objective, PROFIBUS is enhanced by the Ethernet-based communication standard PROFInet. The use of open standards rather than proprietary solutions ensures long-term compatibility and ex-pandability-in other words-protection of existing investment. This is a matter of key importance to the PROFIBUS User Organization. The continuous development of PRO-FIBUS technology provides members with a long-term perspective .