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29 March, 2024

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Siemens and Emerson agree to support each other`s bus systems
Published:  01 July, 2006

Siemens and Emerson have reached an agreement under which Siemens will add support for the Fieldbus Foundation bus system to its control systems, while Emerson will start to support Profibus DP. The companies say that the deal, which involves exchanges of technology and engineering support, will provide customers with enhanced interoperability and functionality.

The co-operation has grown out of the work that the two companies have been doing together with users and other suppliers to deliver open, interoperable variable speed drives and field instrumentation based on the EDDL (Electronic Device Description Language) standard.

Under the agreement, Siemens Automation & Drives will add Fieldbus Foundation (FF) interfaces to its Simatic PCS 7 process control system and its Process Device Manager (PDM), in addition to the Profibus and Hart standards that it already supports. This will allow PCS7 users to connect their systems to instruments and controllers from Emerson and other companies that support FF.

For its part, Emerson Process Management will expand its DeltaV and Ovation control systems, and its AMS Suite: Intelligent Device Manager application, to support Profibus DP and Profinet interfaces as well as the existing FF and Hart standards. This will allow the Emerson products to connect to drives, motor starters and other devices that have Profibus DP or Profinet interfaces.

The first products sporting the new connections are expected to reach the market by the middle of next year.

Emerson and Siemens also plan to use the OPC Foundation`s proposed OPC UA (OLE for Process Control Unified Architecture) standard in their systems. They say the technology will offer a consistent use of EDDL for data description and presentation to the user interface.

EDDL is also used to describe the information exchange between any OPC server and OPC client applications, thus providing independence from operating systems and their variants. Siemens and Emerson say they will actively support development of the necessary OPC UA specifications and the enhancements to EDDL.

Siemens says it will continue to develop and support Profibus DP.

Profibus International (PI), the organisation that represents Profibus users and suppliers, has welcomed the agreement, saying it will be especially important because of Emerson`s strength in the global process automation market. It adds that the collaboration will also speed up the use of open technologies and expand the compatibility of automation products. PI says that the recently established working group that is looking at DCS requirements for Profinet will continue to work on on communication-specific requirements for process automation.

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