Scottsdale, AZ – April 4, 2011 – PI North America, the home of PROFINET and PROFIBUS in the USA and Canada, has announced that Bernie Anger, General Manager Control and Communication Systems for GE Intelligent Platforms, has been elected to its Board of Directors. The appointment follows GE Intelligent Platforms’ commitment to use PROFINET, PI’s real time Ethernet solution for automation in the manufacturing and process industries, as the backbone network of its next generation PACSystems controller architecture, and is a further reflection of the increasing popularity worldwide of PROFINET as the leading communications networking solution for factory and process automation.
Michael Bryant, Executive Director of PI North America, said that he was delighted to welcome Anger to the Board of Directors. “GE Intelligent Platforms has been a member of PI North America since 1995. Having Bernie on the Board means GE can now play a big role in determining the strategic direction of our technologies in the USA and Canada. We are already seeing increased success across all industries and there’s no doubt that the expertise and leadership that Bernie brings, together with the market impact that GE Intelligent Platforms will make, can accelerate progress not only in North America but globally too.”
Anger said: “One of the reasons we chose PROFINET for our next generation platform was that it is based on an open protocol developed collectively by major global players. PROFINET via real time Ethernet will allow deeper focus on customer solution specific needs. I am enthusiastic about the prospects for both PROFINET and GE Intelligent Platforms, and I look forward to helping PI North America to continue enhancing PROFINET.”
GE Intelligent Platforms: GE Intelligent Platforms is an experienced high-performance technology company and a global provider of software, hardware, services, and expertise in automation and embedded computing. It offers a unique foundation of agile and reliable technology providing customers a sustainable competitive advantage in the industries they serve, including energy, oil & gas water, consumer packaged goods, government & defense, and telecommunications. GE Intelligent Platforms is headquartered in Charlottesville, VA. For more information, visit http://www.ge-ip.com/.
PI North America: PI North America is a non-profit, member-supported automation organization for fieldbus and Industrial Ethernet, specifically PROFIBUS and PROFINET. It is dedicated to supporting the discrete and process industries in achieving beneficial results using these networks. PI North America also assists device manufacturers in the development and marketing of PROFIBUS and PROFINET products. It is one of 27 regional associations that make up the global PI community. Established in 1989, PI has over 1400 members, who have developed and now supply more than 2500 types of devices. To date, more than 36,000,000 PROFIBUS devices have been installed and the total number of PROFINET installations now exceeds 3,000,000. Members of PI North America include vendors of hardware, software and systems as well as end users and operators, scientific institutes, universities, distributors, and system integrators.
PROFINET: PROFINET is a real time Industrial Ethernet developed by PI to bring Ethernet communications into manufacturing environments, facilitating better control, easier installation and improved maintenance. PROFINET also simplifies data exchange between IT systems and the plant floor, enabling enterprise-wide improvements in asset management and production control. PI develops and maintains PROFINET specifications via Working Groups comprised of representatives of major automation equipment vendors. Representatives of GE Intelligent Platforms recently collaborated with other world leaders in the development of the ‘PROFINET for Process’ specification, which defines the special functionality required by the process industries. These include system and media redundancy, time stamping, the integration of existing fieldbuses and ‘Configuration in Run’. PROFINET also directly supports added-value services such as Functional Safety and Energy Management which can dramatically enhance a plant’s operations and increase productivity and competitiveness.