The boards of directors of the Fieldbus Foundation and the HART Communication Foundation approved unifying the two foundations into a new industry organization dedicated to the needs of intelligent devices and their integration in process automation.
The combined power of both organizations will protect the investments that end users in process automation have made in HART and FOUNDATION fieldbus communication technologies. The mission of the combined organization will be to develop, manage and promote global standards for integrating devices into automation-system architectures, providing functional solutions for process automation suppliers and end users. Suppliers will also profit from the increased efficiencies in resource utilization, procedure consistency and member service and support improvements.
The Fieldbus Foundation and HART Communication Foundation have a long history of cooperation. The two worked together to develop common international standards, such as electronic device description language (EDDL) specifications and field device integration (FDI) technology. The FOUNDATION fieldbus and HART specifications will continue to exist individually. Each protocol will retain its own brand name, trademarks, patents and copyrights.
The new organization will continue development, support and promotion of the two existing protocols, and will direct the development, incorporation and implementation of new and overlapping technologies. The organization will eventually serve as the single source for FDI, the sole integration tool for HART and FOUNDATION fieldbus technologies. The name of the proposed organization is not yet finalized.
For more information, visit: www.fieldbus.org
