Honeywell Pushes for Unified Standards

A growing chorus within industry just got significantly louder in calling for a unified standard for integrating field devices with facility control systems. Honeywell recently joined the EDDL Cooperation Team (ECT) , which will become the FDI Cooperation, a group of process automation technology developers pushing for Field Device Integration (FDI) specification packages in their systems and products.

Honeywell said it will provide resources to help complete the standard. Finalization of the FDI specification is planned this year. The ECT will be responsible for developing common design and test tools, common binary format and an interpreter across the HART Communications Foundation, FOUNDATION Fieldbus and PROFIBUS protocols.

Increased interoperability continues to be a key demand of process manufacturers, and the FDI specification will be a major step forward in helping them design integrated process control solutions that improve overall plant safety, reliability, efficiency and sustainability, says Scott Hillman, director of marketing for Honeywells Process Solutions wing.

Honeywell supports this effort because it can reduce the overall cost of ownership of digital field devices for our customers and improve the effectiveness of advanced diagnostics that will help move the industry forward, he said.