Fieldbus standard should be suspended
Fieldbus standard should be suspended
Keyword Fieldbus
PROFIBUS International(PI), the umbrella organization representing 20 national PROFIBUS user groups and more than 650 PROFIBUS members worldwide, is calling for further work on the proposed IEC 61158 international fieldbus standard to be suspended and replaced by an alternative approach. PI believes that IEC 61158 is unproven, unsupported and unworkable.
Following the acceptance of the CDV documents in March, IEC final draft international standard (FDIS)documents for the data link layer (DLL), and the application layer (AL) are due soon to be voted on by national committees around the world. It is believed the voting period will be August and September 1998.
Pointing out that after 14 years, the fieldbus market is well established, with fully proven solutions now a reality for thousands of end users globally, PROFIBUS PR director Geoff Hodgkinson said: "IEC 61158 covers only the process control sector in theory and ignores industrial automation. In practice it is a paper specification that has no substance. It has never been implemented. No vendor has proved the viability of the protocol; no products exist and not one vendor anywhere has ever indicated that products will be built. There is no chip support. Any communications expert will tell you that unproven documents of this complexity(there are 1,000 pages) will contain innumerable errors. The specification is severely deficient and cannot be implemented without major work. No one is prepared to invest the money or effort to do this.
"The basic IEC requirements of testability, usability, etc. are being ignored. To ask national committees worldwide to make considered and balanced technical judgements about such complex documents is not realistic", said Hodgkinson. "We call on the IEC to suspend work immediately and look for an alternative approach."
Europe is ahead of the world in recognising the problem of standardizing fast-moving technology in high competition markets. In the fieldbus environment, CENELEC incorporated three market-leading solutions (PROFIBUS, WorldFiP and P-Net) into EN 50 170 for this reason and is poised to add FOUNDATION Fieldbus and ControlNet.
EN 50 170 would be a better world standard than IEC 61158. Another option is to embed EN 50 170 solutions into IEC 61158. This is a practical way because it addresses market realities and allows users to decide what is best for them based on traditional buying principles.
For further information contact: Geoff Hodgkinson, PROFIBUS International, 1, West Street, Titchfield,Hants PO14 4DH, UK. Tel: +44 (0)1329 843043; Fax: +44 (0)1329 512063; E-mail: profibus_pr@gghcoms.demon.co.ukor profibus_pr@compuserve.com
