Yes, intelligent instruments need intelligent work processes. That’s the position taken by Larry O’Brien and Herman Storey in the Plant Services magazine article “Power to the process.” The lament of the article is that those intelligent work processes are infrequently implemented.
PROFIBUS PA, Foundation Fieldbus, and HART are the protocols named as being in intelligent instruments. Larry is with the Fieldbus Foundation and so the examples are FF-centric, but the article really applies to all three protocols. I view HART as complementary to PROFIBUS (and PROFINET) and Foundation Fieldbus as competition. However, as this article reveals, we three together face a bigger competitor – hard-wired 4-20mA only instruments. We cannot say often enough or loud enough that the benefits of using intelligent instruments are here now, they’re well-proven, and forward thinking companies have been using them for years! If you aren’t using intelligent instruments, get some; if you have not put work processes in place to take advantage of intelligent instruments, start now.
Fieldbuses are about much more than saving wire and time at installation; they are about improved uptime through wise asset maintenance. Read the article.
One point from the article I’d like to emphasize: get some training. For PROFIBUS PA, start with one of our free classes around the US (like next week in Kansas City). Follow it up with one of our fee-based classes like the PROFIBUS PA class at the PROFI Interface Center this month. Or check out our four-part webinar series on PROFIBUS in Process.
–Carl Henning