Rockwell Automation and Fieldbus Foundation Top US News

Rockwell Automation experienced both record revenue growth of 24 percent to 6 billion Dollar and a record turnout to its annual gathering – Automation Fair. Rockwell\’s PR team announced attendance after the Wednesday 16 November opening day at over 10.000. Near the end of the second day of the event, they told me that the final number would be around 16.000 for the 20th annual gathering. The Rockwell Process Systems Users Group met on Monday and Tuesday 14-15 November. This event attracted about 800 users for its 10th year – another record. While Rockwell is well known to be the dominant supplier for factory automation in the US, these numbers reveal how far the company has traveled over the past several years in its quest to become a significant supplier in process automation. Two things dominat-ed news regarding factory automation: scaling its high-end programmable automation controllers (PACs) into the \’mid-range\‘ and the dominance of Ethernet – especially the suite of protocols promulgated by ODVA under the CIP family. Process Automation Process business leader Som Chakraborti reported that advanced software from Pavilion is being embedded into the control platform for process automation. Inside conversations I had, it sounds as if many of the benefits from the intellectual prop-erty acquired with the Pavilion purchase are beginning to take hold. Software integration is complex, but when done yields powerful results. We\’ll see where this all winds up at Rockwell. Process business last year grew five times the rate of overall process business growth – surely a sign of market share growth. Meanwhile, the Fieldbus Foundation drew several editors from North America to Houston, Texas for a significant announcement. There are two questions that many have had regard-ing the direction of the Foundation Fieldbus specification. The first is how will the network organization use its High Speed Ethernet (HSE) protocol. The second concerns how the various wireless technologies will play in the network. Those questions found answers at the Dec. 1 Media Day at Lee College. The day was divided between announcements and discussion regarding several new specifications and technologies and a discussion and tour of Lee College\’s extensive training and labs for instrumentation technicians. The overall technology is dubbed Remote Operations Management. The essential components of the platform will provide a more powerful SCADA experience as well as further empower the mobile worker. It includes ability to handle greater point-count Remote I/O and abil-ity to incorporate various wireless standards including ISA 100.11a of the International Society of Automation and ­WirelessHart of the Hart Communication Foundation.